Expert: Armenia no longer disputes Karabakh's belonging to Azerbaijan Dmitry Solonnikov talks to Caliber.Az

The opening of the border checkpoint on the Lachin-Khankendi road is a logical continuation of the present political situation which has been observed since the end of last year. The tensions in the region increased day by day with the efforts of the remnants of the bandit formations in Karabakh and the different forces in Armenia which continued to exacerbate the situation.

This is how the director of the Russian Institute of Contemporary State Development, Dmitriy Solonnikov, commented to Caliber.Az on the establishment of the checkpoint in Lachin.

Let us remind, in order to prevent the Armenian provocations and illegal transportation of manpower, ammunition, mines, as well as other military equipment, on April 23, at 12:00, units of Azerbaijan's State Border Service installed a border checkpoint on its sovereign territories, on the border with Armenia, at the beginning of the Lachin-Khankendi road. The border checkpoint was also a direct response to the fact that on April 22, Armenia unilaterally, and contrary to the tripartite statement of November 10, 2020, trespassed Azerbaijan's territory. At the same time, as noted in a statement from the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, the necessary conditions will be created for transparent and orderly passage through this checkpoint.

Here is what a well-known Russian political scientist Dmitry Solonnikov thinks about it: "First there was an unauthorized export of natural resources from the territory of Azerbaijan, continued supplying of illegal armed units, although they had to be disbanded in accordance with the Trilateral Declaration of November 10, 2020. And all this had to be stopped. Therefore, already with the appearance of pickets by peaceful environmental activists on the Lachin-Khankendi road, it became clear that the situation would not return in the opposite direction, i.e. to complete uncontrolled cross-border movement (as it had once been).

The Armenian side, for its part, has not responded appropriately to what is happening. There was no attempt to investigate the illegal export of natural resources, nor were there any statements about the disarmament of illegal armed groups. On the contrary, Yerevan reacted inadequately to the situation, calling for the unblocking of the road, although both humanitarian cargoes and ambulances were moving freely along it. And the absurd hysteria of the Armenian side with its attempts to compare the fictitious "blockade of Karabakh" to the sieged hero-city of Leningrad is even blasphemous.

In other words, it was obvious that instead of serious action from the Armenian side, there was an attempt to stir a media hype, a PR attack. Yes, it is clear that the political technology experts who are now advising Yerevan from the US and Western Europe are masters of creating information products, and, in general, this was the bet on it. But nothing came of it. The Armenian side failed to drag Russia and the CSTO into this situation, even though Pashinyan demonstrated his negative attitude toward Moscow in every way and spoke about the military bloc's incompetence, about the need to be more oriented towards the West, NATO and the EU, etc. It is therefore not surprising that the provocations on the border took place precisely during the Armenian defence minister's visit to NATO headquarters.

But now the situation has changed, Azerbaijan has legally set up a border crossing point on its territory, and Armenia has set up its own border crossing point. That means that the countries have fixed their territories, which is quite logical. In fact, there is already a state border, and the belonging of Karabakh to Azerbaijan is not even disputed.

The border crossing point is established on the Lachin-Khankendi road, i.e. a border treaty can be signed. If this is the case, it means that everything has been done correctly. Armenia can make another attempt to spark infowar. Therefore, some kind of information escalation cannot be ruled out. However, if we take into account that previous information wars instigated by Armenia have come to nothing, the new attempt will most probably be in vain.

Nevertheless, I believe that the situation will calm down in some time, and then we can talk about the development of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the political and economic realities. We can only welcome the fact that Karabakh's belonging to Azerbaijan is becoming more and more institutional and legal. No one doubted this before, but now we can see that Armenia is taking real steps towards recognising this fact."