Conflict and Peace

"The Armenian government and Armenian society have reached the limits of concessions on Nagorno Karabakh, and any agreement which will not explicitly secure a long-term and solid international presence in Nagorno Karabakh (either through the deployment of peacekeeping forces or a large-size mission) will be rejected by the majority of the population", writes Benyamin Poghosyan in this op-ed for commonspace.eu. He adds that "it should be clear to the international community that any new government in Armenia will pursue a tougher policy on the issues related to Nagorno Karabakh and relations with Azerbaijan. Thus, all those external actors, who are interested in the stability of the region, should understand that any additional pressure on the Armenian government to drop its demands for a solid international presence in Nagorno Karabakh, and failure to explicitly secure that presence in the peace agreement, is a recipe for significant political destabilization in Armenia, and has the potential of ruining the ongoing Armenia – Azerbaijan negotiation process, and bring the region back to a renewed cycle of violence."

The US Department of Defense has announced another package of military aid to Ukraine, this time totalling $375m. It is the 38th round of equipment sent to Ukraine by the US since August 2021. The statement released by the US Department of Defense on Sunday (21 May) following President Joe Biden's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the G7 meeting in Japan details the capabilities included in the latest package. It will include further ammunition with HIMARS rocket systems that have wrought havoc on Russian troop and equipment concentrations since they were first supplied to Ukraine in June 2022. It will also supply Javelin anti-tank missiles and AT-4 anti-armour systems, as well as armoured bridging systems, logistics support, and thermal imagery systems. This latest package comes after Joe Biden signaled that he would authorise the third-party transfer of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, something that Ukraine has pressured allies over for months. He would also support an international intiative to train Ukrainian pilots on the jets, he added while at the G7 summit in Japan.

The European Union continues to play an instrumental part in helping Armenia and Azerbaijan to narrow the differences between them and move closer to signing a peace agreement normalising relations, writes commonspace.eu in this editorial.  On Sunday (14 May), European Council president Charles Michel, hosted Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Brussels for several hours of talks which Michel described as being “frank, open and result-oriented” and “focused on progress on the path towards Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization.” Michel said that “the leaders shared a common willingness for a South Caucasus at peace. I commend their respective efforts. Together, we reviewed all issues on our agenda.” commonspace.eu political editor commenting on the results of the 14 May Brussels meeting said that clearly the negotiations have reached a decisive stage. This is now not a discussion on abstract principles but on tangible and practical issues that will have an impact on the lives of Armenians and Azerbaijanis across the region.

After months of diplomacy by e-mail, Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Washington DC in the first week of May for negotiations led by the foreign ministers of the two countries, with the United States providing facilitation and support, writes commonspace.eu in this editorial. The presence of US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, at the opening of the talks, raised expectations that the talks may be conclusive. They were not, but enough progress was made for Blinken to return for the closing session, telling his guests that the US appreciated that the last bit of any negotiating process was going to be the most difficult. "The temptation to draw out the ongoing situation for many more months, with the hope that time is on their side, has big risks. Unplanned incidents still have the capacity to escalate quickly and spiral out of control, feeding on the existing level of mistrust. The violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan reported this morning (11 May) is a case in point. So in many ways this is the moment of truth, even if some would argue that we have been here before. Somehow however this time it feels different, even if the nitty-gritty problems have not gone away," they add.