Russia in Global Affairs

The political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is entering a phase of stagnancy, which is unavoidable in the run-up to the presidential elections in Armenia and Azerbaijan. This makes it possible to examine the problem in more detail and to look for ways out of the long stalemate.

Any recognition of a state is a political act: its legal effects rarely go beyond the framework of relations between two particular entities.The Soviet Union’s administrative borders were sometimes rather arbitrary. Today, by a quirk, Westerners, who reject all things Soviet, uphold the administrative borders that existed during the Soviet Union.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, which broke out in 1988, was the first armed clash on the territory of the Soviet Union. The word ‘Karabakh’ became a common noun used to describe any armed conflict on the territory of the former Soviet Union.