In Year after April 2016 Fighting, Russia Strengthened Its Military Presence in Armenia

A political scientist, head of the Atlas Analytical Center Elkhan Shahinoglu published a book The April Ceasefire dedicated to the political results of the year after the fighting in Karabakh, April 2-5, 2016.

“Last year was remembered by the fact that during four days of fighting the Azerbaijanis got rid of the psychological pressure of the military defeat of the beginning of the nineties. If 20 years later the Azerbaijani army was able to return a number of strategic heights captured by Armenia and begin restoration of a village destroyed by the enemy, it means that it is possible to free the rest of the occupied lands,” the author argues.

But with hopes, the year 2016 brought disappointments. After the April fights, the superpowers did not force Armenia to abandon the plans to seize Karabakh and did not demand the withdrawal of troops from the areas around Nagorno-Karabakh.

The war has not become an occasion for the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries, i.e. Russia, France and the United States, to change their policies in the region. The meetings of the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia organized by the mediators in Vienna and St. Petersburg were unsuccessful.

After the April battles, Russia's military support for Armenia grew. At first, Moscow deployed its Iskander missiles in Armenia, then issued a $ 200 million loan to Armenia for weapons. Plus, statements by Russian officials throughout the year have shown Moscow's lack of interest in resolving the Karabakh crisis, Shahinoglu said.

Armenian leaders make it clear they do not intend to give away the lands they occupied. They doom their people to poverty, demographic losses, and enmity with Turkey and Azerbaijan.

The preliminary results of the April 2 parliamentary elections in Armenia won by the Republican Party of Sargsyan confirm such conclusions.

A poll conducted by the Atlas center in 2016 about the expectations of Azerbaijanis from the process of the Karabakh settlement showed that the majority of respondents do not trust the OSCE Minsk Group and do not consider a peaceful settlement of the conflict possible.

The analytical study The April Ceasefire was published in the publishing house Ganun (Baku) on 200 pages. This is the author's second book on the Karabakh settlement. The first was published in 2010, titled Nagorno-Karabakh: Status without Status. In 2015, Shahinoglu published a book From Maidan to Maidan, dedicated to the events in Ukraine.  -0-