Azerbaijan and Armenia to meet on 25 May in Moscow

The Nagorno-Karabakh region is once again plunged into a climate of tension and violence that has led the parties to rethink the situation in the former Soviet Autonomous Oblast. The clashes reported a week ago left one Armenian soldier dead and two others wounded. According to the Armenian Defence Ministry statement, "Azerbaijani armed forces violated the ceasefire in Sotk, using drones". A few days earlier, an Azeri soldier had been killed, raising tensions just days before Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev were due to meet.
 
The EU-sponsored meeting was one of numerous efforts by the international community to calm the waters in the Caucasus. Earlier this month, it was the United States that tried to mediate a resolution to the historic conflict. The Armenian and Azeri administrations held intensive four-day talks in Washington, which did not go down well in Russia. In fact, Moscow has responded with an invitation to the leaders of both countries to host the talks, scheduled for 25 May.

"We have received a proposal from Russia to hold a trilateral summit in Moscow under the mediation of the Russian president. We have accepted the offer," Pashinian said in a statement issued by the Armenian news agency Armenpress. He also referred to his meeting with his Azeri counterpart in Brussels, where, he said, "another step was taken". The meeting was 'result-oriented in terms of advancing the normalisation agenda between the two countries'. In Yerevan, it is clear that any solution to the conflict requires mutual recognition of the territorial integrity of the two countries.
 
This step of recognition is, according to the Armenian president, a key factor "in finalising the text of the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace treaty and border delimitation". The hope is that, thanks to the succession of these meetings, rapid progress will be made in bringing the agreement closer. This is especially the case given the West's concern over tension in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, where more and more countries want to gain influence due to their strategically advantageous position. Hence Russia has acted swiftly to avoid losing the leverage it gained by acting as a mediator in 2020 to end the second Nagorno-Karabakh war.

Interests in the region have grown exponentially in recent times. Azerbaijan has a significant advantage due to the support provided by Turkey, while Armenia, although helped by Russia, does not have the same level of backing. It is Iran that stands as one of the alternatives for Yerevan, which intends to acquire Iranian drones used by the Russians in the invasion of Ukraine. Proof of their good performance on the battlefield has made Armenia interested in them to bolster its military capabilities.
 
For its part, Tehran is keen to strengthen its ties with the country led by Nikol Pashinian. They want to gain influence in Eastern Europe, and Armenia may be one of the most tempting options for Ebrahim Raisi's side. Serbia - thanks to its confrontation with the Kosovars - is the other major alternative. Hence, the instability in the region is favouring the interests of countries such as Iran and, consequently, putting Europe and the United States on alert, which have put all their machinery to work to try to reach an agreement that would put a definitive end to the confrontation that began almost four decades ago with the first war in Nagorno-Karabakh (1988-1994).