Yerevan /Mediamax/. Special Assistant to the U.S. President, Senior Director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council Fiona Hill will leave her post in August 2019, U.S. media reports.

Fiona Hill has recently met Armenian National Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan, who made a working visit to U.S.

Previously employed at Brookings Institution, Fiona Hill is one of the few American experts with solid knowledge of the South Caucasus region and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

In November of 2004 Hill noted that South Caucasus did not have a common agenda, which could contribute to the joint development of the region’s countries.

“All the regional players in the Caucasus lead their own game. It is very interesting to compare the Caucasus with the Baltic countries where the same discussions have been held or are still held as in the Caucasus - about the integration to Europe, cooperation with NATO, etc. The Baltic countries have successfully solved these issues because they acted jointly. But everything happens differently in the Caucasus. There is no common agenda which could contribute to the joint development of the region’s countries. The key issue is the absence of cooperation between them. I am not sure that Georgia will be able to play the role of a “bridge” linking all the countries of the region, as Armenia and Azerbaijan assess Georgia’s role negatively. Today we observe rivalry between the three republics and it takes place not only within the region but also in Paris, London, Moscow and Washington,” Fiona Hill said in the interview to Washington ProFile then.

In October of 2010 she stated that “the NK conflict cannot be considered frozen any longer”.

“It becomes evident that the number of shots fired and casualties on the Line of Contact is growing, and Azerbaijan is actively preparing to a new war. Extension of the agreement on stationing a Russian military base in Armenia could be a deterrent in some measure, but the Russian President is visiting Baku and arming the other party of the conflict parallel with that, which only increases the possibility of a new war,” Ms. Hill said in the interview to Armenian service of Voice of America.

In June 2015 Fiona Hill and two co-authors published an article titled “Confidence Games: Azerbaijan, the European Olympics, and the West”, which analyzed the reasons of a cooling in relations between Baku and its Western partners.

In particular, the article stated that “for Azerbaijan, the West’s forceful response and sanctions against Moscow after its annexation of Crimea stands in sharp contrast to the muted international reactions to the decades-long occupation by Armenian-backed forces of nearly one-fifth of Azerbaijan’s territory”.

“Azerbaijan insists that Washington’s policy toward the region has been influenced by the U.S.-Armenian diaspora, which successfully lobbied to have Azerbaijan excluded from receiving direct U.S. government assistance during the early phases of the war over Nagorno-Karabakh,” the article reads.

The co-authors noted that “incremental measures towards resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should be developed and backed by real incentives that boost the benefits of peace for both sides” in order to restore trust between Azerbaijan and the West. “The West should also revive its support for Azerbaijan’s independence and territorial integrity, but be realistic about the limits of its leverage and careful not to over promise,” they observed.

In 2006-2009, Fiona Hill served as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council. Before that she worked in Harvard University and Eurasia Foundation.

In 2013, Fiona Hill published the book “Mr. Putin Operative in the Kremlin”, which was republished in 2015.