When Russia announces that Crimea is Russia, what punctuation mark does it put in the end – a period, exclamation point or suspension point?
Naturally, the conflicts of Crimea and Nagorno-Karabakh have different origins, history and dynamics, but it’s not possible to avoid the temptation of drawing parallels between them when the Russian foreign minister compares Armenia and Albania in the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Speaking at the Valdai Forum in Sochi on October 2, Lavrov touched upon the Karabakh conflict, noting that “the situation is much calmer now than a year ago, but the political process is stalled and attempts to advance it has been failing."
“The parties are making quite serious statements. In particular, there has been a statement that ‘Karabakh is Armenia’, just like Albanian prime minister announced from Tirana that ‘Kosovo is Albania’. Such statements certainly do not contribute to the formation of an atmosphere conducive to the resumption of the political process,” Lavrov said.
Yesterday, the Armenian Foreign Ministry responded to this statement, not in a tough but quite a persistent manner. Reaffirming Armenia’s position, the Foreign Ministry deemed it important for the mediators to avoid one-sided and selective assessments.
Around two months later, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also referred to the Armenian prime minister’s “Artsakh is Armenia; period” remark during the same Valdai Forum. First, he dismissed the statement as “a lie”, since “the whole world recognizes Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan” and “Karabakh is an indigenous territory of Azerbaijan”, adding: “Therefore, Karabagh is Azerbaijan and exclamation point.”
It turns out that Russian FM Lavrov provided a background for the Azerbaijani president, giving him the courage to be able to make the mentioned statemen...
