Yerevan /Mediamax/. Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center Dmitri Trenin believes that Russia had to accept Turkey’s role in the South Caucasus and its military presence in Azerbaijan.

“In the South Caucasus, the strategic landscape was changed in 2020 by Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenia in the second war over Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia failed to prevent the war, and stayed away from the fighting, but managed to stop it once the Azerbaijani victory was evident. Russia engaged in peacekeeping, dealing with both sides and bringing them together, and putting its own troops on the ground in Karabakh,” Trenin writes in the article “Russia and Europe: the Current Impasse and the Way Out”.

“Moscow has had to accept Turkey’s role in the South Caucasus and its physical military presence in Azerbaijan. By contrast, Russia’s own position in Armenia has suffered, due both to the prevalence of Western-leaning individuals in the current government, and Yerevan’s defeat in the war, despite being Moscow’s military ally. Russia’s dominant role in Karabakh and its influence in Armenia are hardly welcome in Europe, and are likely to be challenged by the United States. Domestic politics in Armenia will play into the Russian-Western rivalry,” writes the expert.