Baku's triumph over separatism and swift passportisation of Garabagh Armenians
Experts share their opinions with Caliber.Az

INTERVIEWS  21 September 2023 - 15:20

It took the Azerbaijani Armed Forces only 24 hours to carry out local anti-terrorist measures in the Garabagh region and fulfill their tasks. The junta raised the white flag and already today representatives of the Azerbaijani community of Garabagh arrived in Yevlakh to discuss reintegration issues on the basis of the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

How are the anti-terrorist measures and their consequences assessed outside Azerbaijan? Caliber.Az asked foreign experts to take this question.

According to Tatyana Poloskova, Doctor of Political Sciences, State Counsellor of the Russian Federation of the first class, in fact, it was a special anti-terrorist action to force peace, because, for a long time, the leaders of the illegal entity with the support of revanchists from Yerevan and a number of foreign countries and structures behaved completely inadequately, did not accept any proposals to settle the situation.

"Moreover, the leaders of the separatists took measures to aggravate the situation, rattling weapons, making harsh statements, shelling peaceful Azerbaijani residents, committing provocations against Russian peacekeepers, and planting mines that killed Azerbaijanis. In the end, Azerbaijan's patience ran out and it was quite natural," the political scientist stressed.

The fact that these measures, according to her, were accomplished within a day, shows that the separatists had no real resources to confront the Azerbaijani Armed Forces.

"But, we should keep in mind the following points. I communicate in Moscow with representatives of the Armenian diaspora, with those living in Yerevan, by virtue of my past specialisation, and I see that the revanchists have not gone anywhere: they threaten to unleash guerrilla warfare, however, immediately pointing out that they have weapons only for two months. And I think it's only for two days," Poloskova said.

In addition, she noted the threats that Armenians are now voicing against Russia, saying that Moscow has not stood up to defend the separatists. Although, she asked, why should Russians die for them?

"We have already seen what happened yesterday to Russian peacekeepers who tragically died as a result of treacherous shelling by Armenian separatists - the threats were not unfounded. Moscow is stuffed with healthy Armenian towsers, who have fun in restaurants, those who seized Russian enterprises in their ownership, taking advantage of Russian naivete back in the 90s. Why don't these Armenian guys go to defend someone and somewhere? Instead, they promise to "give Russia problems". It is clear what kind of problems, we remember the terrorist attacks in Moscow, organised by Armenians. So our authorities are also now remaining vigilant, monitoring the situation.

As for the discussions in Yevlakh, I fear that the Armenians will again try to take the situation in a non-constructive direction, to bring it to a dead end. Time will tell," Poloskova concluded.

In the opinion of Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military and political observer of the Information Resistance group, there was a 44-day liberation war in 2020, but in 2023 the anti-terrorist measures were completed practically in 24 hours."

"The results of these events are quick, productive, somewhere even unexpected and expected at the same time. I, for example, did not expect the current escalation to be of the level of the 44-day war. The fact that in three years Armenia has not been able to recover from the losses it suffered in 2020 was not unexpected either. It is not about personnel, not about human resources, but rather about the technical component: the Armenian Armed Forces could not restore all the military equipment, and compensate for all the losses they suffered during the 44-day war, so the separatists were unable to provide any adequate resistance to the Azerbaijani army. In this case, only ceasefire and agreement to Baku's terms were the only way out for them," the Ukrainian political scientist noted.

On the other hand, he said, there is a question of whether it will really end with the fulfillment of all the conditions set by Baku, or whether it will turn into another Armenian circus.

"In the last three years, we have seen that diplomatic efforts have been constantly thwarted by the Armenian side, they have even been essentially ignored. Therefore, there may be a similar situation with Armenians simply diverting attention by coming to Yevlakh. However, given that Armenia and the separatists now simply do not have the resources to wage an armed conflict in the long term, or at least in the medium term, accepting Baku's conditions is the only possible option now.

However, the coming days will show whether this is true or not. If illegal armed groups and their equipment are withdrawn from Azerbaijani territory, it will be indicative. If the processes of integration of Armenians into Azerbaijani society begin in deed and not in words, then, yes, this will also speak about the results," Kovalenko summed up.

In turn, the deputy director general of the Vestnik Kavkaza news agency and Russian political scientist Andrei Petrov noted that "since the separatist regime has been destroyed, we can only expect positives from today's meeting in Yevlakh."

"The separatists simply have nothing to resist anymore. Moreover, they can no longer even be considered separatists, because they no longer exist separately from Azerbaijan even in a small part. They are simply not passported citizens of Azerbaijan, who should be provided with these passports according to the legislation. Of course, only those who are not guilty of any crimes before the Azerbaijani state.

Armenians will not put forward any conditions. They just came to Yevlakh to receive instructions on how the Armenian population of the Garabagh economic region of Azerbaijan can quickly obtain Azerbaijani passports. Also, of course, the issue of war criminals will be resolved. Yesterday a detailed list of all war criminals was already presented, now they just have to be detained and sent to court.

So I simply do not see any problems, any security threats to Azerbaijan. Yesterday's victory of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces and capitulation of the separatists was final and irrevocable, with which I can only congratulate Baku," Petrov told Caliber.Az.

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