Point of view: Russia and Turkey: unlikely winners of the Karabakh conflict

A bloody six-week war in Nagorno-Karabakh has ended, after the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a peace agreement negotiated by Moscow. As the dust settles, Azerbaijan appears to be the clear winner, while Armenia has suffered a bitter defeat. However, there are two other powers that have benefited from the conflict and the resolution effort: Turkey and Russia.

For Turkey, the war in Karabakh was a showcase for Ankara’s growing role in the strategically important southern Caucasus.

The Turkish army supplied, trained and supported the victorious Azerbaijani army. Some reports suggest that Turkish officers played a key role in guiding the drone strikes that played a decisive role in this conflict, although Ankara has denied this.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also expressed his diplomatic support for Azerbaijan. The victory shows that Turkey has gained significant influence in the region, particularly in Turkic Azerbaijan.

At the same time, the outcome of this war, and in particular the way the peace agreement came about, is a victory for Russia.

Just a couple of weeks ago, with major Azeri breakthroughs and videos of modern drones destroying Soviet-era Armenian tanks, Moscow’s position looked pitiful. A great power that was once the undisputed regional hegemony seemed incapable of saving Armenia, its only allied treaty in the southern Caucasus.

But the Russian calculations turned out to be more sophisticated and nuanced.

Over the past two decades, the Kremlin has had no illusions that, with an Azeri defense budget fueled by petrodollars three times that of Armenia, the balance of power has tilted inexorably towards Azerbaijan. Moscow tried to pressure Armenia to accept a diplomatic agreement negotiated by Russia, the United States and France, but the Armenian side refused to make concessions.

When a democratic revolution in Armenia brought Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to power in 2018, Yerevan’s public stance on Nagorno-Karabakh became even harsher.

That is why for years Russia has made it clear to the Armenian government that the military treaty between Yerevan and Moscow covers only the internationally recognized territory of Armenia, and not Karabakh. When the Azeri attack began, Armenia was alone.

When the Azeri army took Shusha (Shushi in Armenian), the second largest city in Karabakh, Russian diplomatic efforts intensified. Using a mixture of diplomacy and pressure, Moscow struck a peace agreement that turns a conflict in which there were no good options for the Kremlin into a situation that helped boost Russia’s influence.

The agreement has prevented the final defeat of Nagorno-Karabakh and the probable expulsion of its Armenian inhabitants.

Russia is dispatching around 2,000 peacekeepers to protect the remaining Armenian population, separate the two adversaries, and patrol a corridor that will connect Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh – something the Kremlin has wanted since 1994, but not before. could get on the negotiating table. war.

Moscow has also managed to sideline Ankara.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is the only signatory to the peace agreement beyond the leaders of the two warring states, and Russian troops will be the only peacekeepers monitoring the implementation of the agreement, with no Turks or other boots on. the ground, although Turkey says it will send observers.

Russia’s border and customs services will control and operate a newly created route connecting Azerbaijan with its Nakhichevan enclave.

Finally, Moscow has shown that it remains an indispensable power in the region and was able to preserve its ties with both Azerbaijan and Armenia, while successfully competing with Turkey.

Moscow’s diplomatic victory has a price. The war has shown the growth of Turkish influence in the Caucasus and Moscow no longer seems the only major power in the region.

But the region had been opening up for the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and no one in Moscow believed that Russia could dominate the region indefinitely.

Then there is the anger and the sense of betrayal that Armenian society feels.

But Moscow believes Yerevan has no realistic options other than to continue to rely on Russia to ensure its safety. A possible by-product of the Armenian defeat could be the fall of the Nikol Pashinyan government, but the Kremlin will not miss it.

The greatest risk for Russia in the future is the precariousness of the peace agreement that Moscow has negotiated.

The treaty ensuring the presence of the Russian peacekeepers will expire in five years, after which both Azerbaijan and Armenia will be in a position to ask for its withdrawal.

The window of opportunity to negotiate a conflict resolution is very narrow, and given the emotions on both sides and the shattered status quo, getting Baku and Yerevan to agree to anything seems like an impossible mission.

This could be the point at which Moscow will need the cooperation of the United States and Europe, which, having been completely absent from the picture this time, can for the moment also be seen as in the field of losers.

Alexander Gabuev is Principal Investigator and Chair of the Russia Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center.