Paul Goble: shelling of peaceful cities aggravates Karabakh conflict

Artillery and missile strikes on Azerbaijani cities are caused by the desire to provoke retaliatory measures by Baku, which will force Moscow to intervene and provide support to Yerevan, but they only strengthened the Azerbaijan's readiness to recapture the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, Paul Goble, a former adviser to the US Secretary of State, told the "Caucasian Knot".

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on October 24, the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met with US First Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Bigan and agreed that a humanitarian truce would come into force on October 26. Today at 8:00 a.m. local time, the agreement came into force, but the parties to the conflict in the first hours exchanged accusations of violating the ceasefire.

Attacks on the civilian population of Azerbaijan, including in areas far beyond the demarcation line, are extremely dangerous, Mr Goble, who is also an expert on the post-Soviet space, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. "Yerevan has to know that this will make Azerbaijan even more committed to expelling Armenian forces from the occupied territories. My guess is that Yerevan took this step to provoke an Azerbaijani reaction that would prompt Moscow to intervene on Yerevan’s side. That suggests that Yerevan sees itself in an ever-weaker position and is going for broke to try to defend itself," the expert has explained.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on October 26, 2020 at 11:29 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.