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By Vahagn Saroyan

The regional visit of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs was rich with both border developments and coupled statements of international structures.

As it is known already, on June 10 the OSCE MG Co-Chairs visited Armenia and held meetings with Armenia’s defense and foreign ministers, as well as presidents of Armenia and Artsakh. One week later, they visited Azerbaijan to meet with Ilham Aliyev and Elmar Mammadyarov.

The key objective of the Co-Chair’s regional visit was to discuss the stances of the parties on the further steps in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement process following the trilateral meeting of Armenian, Russian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers hosted by Moscow on April 28. To remind, according to the official statements, at the Moscow meeting the “parties continued discussing the issue on moving forward the negotiation process of the Karabakh conflict settlement, highlighting the necessity to implement the agreements reached at Vienna and St. Petersburg summits last year.”

An attention should be paid to the necessity to implement the agreements reached at Vienna and St. Petersburg summits.

It is a well-known fact that the agreements reached at the above-mentioned summits prescribe the establishment of investigative mechanisms into ceasefire violations and expansion of the mission of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office. Which, naturally, is not in Baku’s interests. Imagine what will happen on the frontline if Azerbaijan does not take provocations. It be simply peace. However, the easiest way out of its failures and the wave of public dissatisfaction for the Azerbaijani military-political leadership is to escalate the frontline situation. Thus, Baku uses all the measures to implement their policy. Therefore, it turns out that the only guarantor to peace and stability in the South Caucasus region is the Armenian soldier, who is obliged to restrain and curb Azerbaijani adventures every time.

Thus, when it comes to Vienna and St. Petersburg agreements Azerbaijan begins shooting regardless the fact that that county was the first one to agree with the terms of the agreements.

As a rest of Azerbaijani escalation of the frontline situation on June 16, three Karabakh servicemen were killed, with three other soldiers sustaining injuries. Let us not forget to mention that while the Co-Chairs paid visits to Armenia and Karabakh, at one of its working visits the Baku leader announced that soon they are going to wave their flag in Shushi. In fact this is a bellicose statement, since a party to the conflict adhering to the ceasefire de jure, announces about its intention of occupying territories together with making numerous statements about the peaceful settlement of the conflict.

We can only assume that at the Moscow meeting Baku was ‘slammed’ over its failure of implementing the reached agreements and consistently undermining the peace talks. The statement by the OSCE Minsk MG Co-Chairs were followed by the statements of the U.S. Department of State, the EU, the UN Secretary General.

The Armenian side has announced on numerous occasions that it is committed to the peaceful settlement of the conflict and the peace talks are to be conducted in conditions of peace and stability in the region. And Azerbaijan’s continues attempts with the threat of use of force, bellicose statements, accompanied with numerous border incidents, are not only doomed to failure and retaliation, but also have led to a situation when there is no negotiation process of settling the conflict currently.

It is also remarkable that at the meeting with the Co-Chairs in Baku, Azeri leader Ilham Aliyev commend on the fact of the victims and wounded of the Armenian side as a result of restraining the Armenian-initiated provocation. After the Co-Chairs left, the Armenian Armed Forces undertook punitive measures, as a result of which Azeri colonel Nadig Gurbanov, deputy commander of the brigade, who personally led the provocative actions of Azerbaijan in the eastern direction, sustained a grave injury in the head. However, Azerbaijan’s defense ministry kept silences about it.

Following the news that the Armenian forces prevented an Azerbaijani subversive attack attempt, which resulted to the death of four Azeri soldiers, the country’s defense ministry began torrents of dissemination and disinformation.

Firstly, they disseminated information, suggesting that the Armenian side allegedly attempted a subversive attack, releasing a poor edited video of questioning an alleged Armenian ‘saboteur’, which was actually a mentally-ill person Zaven Karapetyan (the relevant bodies will still explain how he ended up in Azerbaijan).

After this incident, Azerbaijan disseminated another piece of disinformation on downing an Armenian UAV, with the device on images posted as a proof reminding more of remnants of an amateur drone, rather than military UAV.

It turns out that Baku has began to make noise, which becomes louder gradually. Any adventurism first of all harms its initiator.

To conclude, amid the absence of the negotiation process on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, the only way to curb Azerbaijan’s adventurism aimed at continuously undermining peace and stability in the region is to take retaliatory actions.