Ally states meet, Yerevan grins and Kyiv advances Events with Murad Abiyev

The editorial staff of Caliber.Az presents the third issue of the “Events with Murad Abiyev” program, covering the week’s main news related to Azerbaijan and beyond.

Azerbaijan-Türkiye-Pakistan

Baku welcomes friends. This week, one after the other, the leaders of the states neighbouring Azerbaijan - Türkiye and Pakistan, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif respectively, visited the country’s capital.

Both visits had one thing in common: both leaders had only recently taken office (Erdogan though not for the first time), and the parties sought to signal to the world that their strategic relationship had only deepened.

The leaders' statements speak for themselves.

"If the Turkish Consulate General opens in Shusha, it will certainly be a message to the world, especially Armenia," Erdogan said. And he added significantly: "We are determined to continue to successfully implement the provisions of the Shusha Declaration, and we will not make any concessions in this matter."

Ilham Aliyev, in turn, said that the Azerbaijani army continues to be built on the model of the Turkish army and that Azerbaijan and Türkiye would hold 16 joint military drills in 2023, 6 of which have already taken place.

The sides agreed to strengthen cooperation in the defence sphere, in particular in the field of relevant education. Azerbaijani Defence Minister Col Gen Zakir Hasanov met with Türkiye’s new National Defence Minister Yashar Guler.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov also talked to his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan about current affairs - this is how Ankara instantly inducts two new key ministers to ensure smooth operations in the most important areas of strategic interaction.

Pakistani PM Sharif also assured the Azerbaijani side that Islamabad unambiguously supports Baku in the matter of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict settlement, and reminded that Pakistan did not establish diplomatic relations with Armenia - his country only considers it possible after the peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia has been achieved and only if it receives a corresponding message from Baku.

Ilham Aliyev, in turn, thanked Sharif for his support and underlined that Azerbaijan had always supported and would always support Pakistan in the Kashmir issue. Sharif also expressed his gratitude to Aliyev for his support in the Kashmir issue. He added that for more than 70 years Pakistan has been subjected to terrorist acts and unprecedented violence by India. The atrocities committed by India have ended the lives of thousands of Kashmiris who have fallen as martyrs. New Delhi also evades UN Security Council resolutions and several other international obligations related to Kashmir.

Among other topics, Azerbaijan and Pakistan discussed defence and defence industry cooperation and agreed to increase the number of joint military exercises.

According to the results of these two visits show, Baku is intensifying military cooperation with Türkiye and Pakistan. Given the fact that the outpost of the anti-Turkish campaign, Armenia, is still being armed by France, Iran, and now India, this policy seems only sensible.

Azerbaijan-Armenia

This proactive policy of Azerbaijan against the backdrop of the forthcoming meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers in Washington has become something of a nuisance, and the whole week was marked by provocations by the Armenian military against the Azerbaijani Army.

On June 11 the illegal Armenian armed formations in the territory of Azerbaijan fired at the positions of the Azerbaijani army in the Khojavand distrcit. On June 13, they shelled Azerbaijani army positions in the Shusha district. At the same time, Azerbaijani Armed Forces positioned in Nakhchivan were shelled from Arazdayan, where a steel mill is being built. And on June 15, fire was opened from Armenian territory at the Lachin checkpoint. Notably, the shelling was carried out during a period of unprecedented passing at the border checkpoint. And further, the Armenian side undertook provocations in the Zangilan direction.

In addition to suppressing enemy firing points, striking the Armenian post from where the shelling took place, and even eliminating two snipers, Baku also responded politically by suspending traffic through the checkpoint - as noted, until Armenia investigates the shelling incident or takes full responsibility for what happened.

Azerbaijan didn't want to close the entrances and exits, but it worked out extremely well: the Armenians can't talk about the closure on the Lachin road because they've been trying to convince the world of the blockade there for a long time. To complain about the traffic being stopped is to admit that there was traffic after all.

Among other things, the Lachin checkpoint apparently provided a one-way ticket to those Armenian soldiers who decided to return to Armenia, thereby laying down their arms. Now the mousetrap seems to have slammed shut. By shelling the checkpoint, Yerevan did a disservice to its soldiers who had not yet had time to leave Azerbaijan. So, the question is whether it did this on purpose, to keep the hotbed of tension alive.

Curiously, the shelling of positions in Khojavand, Shusha and Nakhchivan occurred in parallel with Erdogan's visit to Baku. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the Turkish president from making some complimentary remarks about Pashinyan upon his return from Baku to Ankara.

“By responding positively to the invitation of the Turkish side [the invitation to attend the inauguration – ed.], Pashinyan has overcome many obstacles and opposition sentiments in his country," Erdogan said.

The Turkish leader also said that the Armenian prime minister's words about recognising the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, including Karabakh, were important.

"But as I said earlier, there are negative sentiments against Pashinyan in Armenia. And this is a very, very serious point. So far, Pashinyan has not taken a step back," Erdogan stressed.

It is easy to notice that Erdogan is hinting either that not everything is in Pashinyan's hands, or, and this is perhaps more likely, that the premier is forced to escalate sometimes to reduce the degree of discontent of the opposition.

Pashinyan's bold statement on June 15 supports this theory. At a National Assembly meeting discussing the report on the 2022 state budget, the Armenian premier unexpectedly launched into a furious tirade over something that is sacred to Armenians - Armenia's national emblem.

The comments were so remarkable that they must be quoted in full: "What is it? Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat and the coats of arms of four Armenian dynasties. Looking at the coat of arms, I have a question: what does it have to do with us? After all, we adopted it in 1991. What does it have to do with the state founded in 1991? What is it about? Looking at the centre, you can see Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat and the current territory of the Republic of Armenia, which is underwater. There you can also see the lion, which has not lived in the natural conditions of Armenia for a long time. And this problem we are discussing is really about duality. And it exists in all of us.”

Apart from subtle trolling about lions, which do not exist in Armenia, and fair commentary on the duality of consciousness, which must be overcome, it is more about the urgent need to normalise relations with Türkiye. After all, the remark about the "national symbol" - Mount Agrydag is about this very thing. No country is going to improve relations with you if you place an object located on its territory on your coat of arms.

So, it looks like Pashinyan's military provocations are part of a big game: two steps forward, one step back. Having humiliated his national ego by shelling Azerbaijani positions, Pashinyan immediately raises the issue of the irrelevance of the main fetish of Armenian ideology - Mount Agrydag. That is, the Armenian prime minister is step by step punching holes in the collective consciousness of his people, realising that this is the only way to somehow bring long-term peace with his neighbours closer.

Meanwhile, Ria Novosti has released an intriguing leak.

"In an ultimatum, Washington is forcing representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh to agree in the near future to a meeting with the Azerbaijani side in a third country with the participation of an American mediator. The aim is to infiltrate the US into the region," the agency reports, citing its source.

The source said that in case of refusal of such contact, the Karabakh separatist leaders are threatened with an Azerbaijani counter-terrorist operation in the region. According to him, the US peacekeeping initiative is lobbied by the so-called "foreign minister" of Karabakh Sergey Ghazaryan, whose interests allegedly fully coincide with those of Azerbaijan.

It is a strange, very confusing statement. On the one hand, it proclaims that the possible anti-terrorist operation is a US initiative, which is intended to declare its hostility to Russia as well. On the other hand, Moscow for the first time voiced that the counter-terrorist operation by Baku is actually in the order of things. And most importantly, the presence of Russian peacekeepers in the region is not a special obstacle to this.

The addressee of this media throw-in is probably Pashinyan and the Armenian society which the Kremlin is trying to push towards each other by such manipulations to some point which is optimal for Russian interests. Starting from the conditions of the Zangazur corridor to the conditions of peace with Azerbaijan and the settlement of relations with Türkiye.

As a rule, every armed escalation and, no less importantly, a decent response from the Azerbaijani side is followed by certain advances in the negotiation process. A reminder that the second round of negotiations of the foreign ministers is expected in Washington.

Ukraine-Russia

Ukraine’s counteroffensive has been underway for over ten days. True, the fighting so far has been more of a reconnaissance nature. The direction of the main strike, as it should be, is kept in the strictest secrecy. It is also possible that even the next attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which is more powerful than the current fighting, will also have a diversionary nature in order to force the Russian army to draw aside its reserves and move in the liberated direction.

At the same time, Ukraine is still waiting for American F-16 fighter jets, although they should have been delivered a year ago in order for them to affect the course of the counterattack. Learning how to fly them is difficult and time-consuming, and the organisation of maintenance and repair takes time. However, the US Defence Department officials made it clear that the purpose of the F-16 project was not to provide Ukraine with combat capabilities to support its counteroffensive, but "to strengthen the country's long-term defence against any future aggression from Moscow”.

However, the absence of US fighters does not give Russia decisive freedom of action in the air, since Western partners have provided Ukraine with a sufficient number of effective air defence capabilities.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to act on two fronts - military action against Ukraine and mutual tension between the main power players in his country. For example, the Russian Defence Ministry issued a decree requiring all volunteers willing to fight in Ukraine to sign a contract with the military department.

The main addressee of this decree is clearly the Wagner PMC, which opposes the military department. The head of the company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, immediately rushed to declare that his soldiers will not sign contracts. And another centre of tension - Ramzan Kadyrov, on the contrary, ordered his soldiers to meet the requirement of the military department. Putin himself added fuel to the fire.

"This is the only way to ensure social guarantees, because if there is no contract with the state, no contract with the Defence Ministry, then there are no legal grounds for social guarantees from the state. We need to do this, and we need to do it as quickly as possible," Putin said.

And the very next day, Prigozhin entered into a controversy with the president, saying that the state must find a way to provide fighters with social guarantees, but the contract "Wagner" does not intend to conclude.

"None of the Wagner PMC fighters is ready to go back to the path of shame," he summed up irreverently.

Is this the first blow of Prigozhin's rebellion against the president? Hardly - not a good time for a revolt. Usually, it happens against the background of failures on the front. So far, Russia has had no serious setbacks. The front, despite the slow advance of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, is generally stable, and despite losses, the army is still reflecting the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Yes, Russia has not accomplished the tasks it announced last February, it has not reached the administrative borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, it has not achieved what it called the “demilitarisation and denationalisation of Ukraine”.

In some aspects, however, it even exceeded them, capturing parts of the regions of Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya. So, neither the belligerent army nor society as a whole has seen any setbacks on the front. Against this background, the escalation of the conflict with Prigozhin rather on the contrary serves to further discredit the army with relative military success. Apparently, Putin feels sufficiently at ease that he is not afraid of raising the degree of confrontation between the notorious Kremlin towers.

At the same time in the statement of the Russian top officials, one can clearly feel the lack of confidence in the long-term success of military action and the desire to register at least some kind of victory as soon as possible. Hence the support for all peace initiatives that propose to freeze the conflict.

In this regard, a statement by First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov, stating that Russia defends "the traditional values of the West," is curious as it can be a sign for the conservative elite of the US, the UK and Europe, in particular the Republican Party of the United States, coming to power as a result of the elections of which is quite probable. Moreover, it is known that Republicans are increasingly opposed to the US’s military support for Kyiv and are in favour of a speedy conclusion of peace on the terms of the factual division of Ukraine.

For now, the Ukrainian front is frozen in a phase of uncertainty. Much depends on the success of the counter-offensive. And it, in turn, depends not only and not so much on weapons and reserves, but more on who will outplay whom in the intellectual field.

These, I believe, were the most relevant events of the week. Until next Saturday.