Armenia, Azerbaijan will have to Act Together: Analyst

In the near future, Baku and Yerevan will have to work more closely with Moscow, said Grigory Trofimchuk, vice-president of the Moscow-based Center of Strategic Development Modelling (also referred to as the Center for Modelling of Strategic Development), in an interview with Novosti-Azerbaijan.

 

Trofimchuk pointed out that Syrian leader Bashar Assad did everything so that he can undergo the same steps as with Gaddafi and when these processes naturally get closer through Syria to the borders of the Greater Caucasus, then all the countries of the region (primarily Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia) will have to choose who they’re with — Russia, Washington or Brussels.

 

At the same time, the Russian analyst noted that in its relations with Europe and the West, Baku has to take into consideration the fact that Azerbaijan is, by definition, a Muslim country and so the West will more quickly take the side of Yerevan than Baku.

 

“The South Caucasus will soon break up: Georgia will go to the West, while Armenia and Azerbaijan (forgetting about the Karabakh conflict) will be forced to act in the same camp, if they don’t want to disappear from the world map altogether, as is the case after all the world wars. They now must come together with Russia in a trilateral format — but not to think about Karabakh again. The only chance for Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to get out of the rigid frame of another script is to develop the strategy of collective action in advance, since no one has yet touched them seriously and individually.

 

“The South Caucasus countries need to realize, to understand that they are not Europe, which they strive to; at best, they are West Asia,” he concluded.