“The Role of External Factors in the Karabakh Process - 2018: Mediators, Regional Actors and International Organizations”: Page 4 of 8

the conflict. Thus, only Russia can contribute or hinder the resolution of the conflict after the military scenario.

Andrey Areshev - Considerations on something like “Dayton” (city in Ohio State in USA) for South Caucasus have been voiced, at least, at the expert level. From time to time, considerations have been voiced on the composition of a foreign contingent, potentially to be deployed in the region of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. If I am not mistaken, the countries of Visegrad Group were mentioned in this context, however, it all died out. In addition, Iran consistently spoke against foreign presence along the perimeter of its borders. Baku’s agreement to such an operation would be difficult to imagine, too. Hence, as of now I am inclined to think that this is not a topical issue, even in the case of military escalation. This is an extremely complicated operation, also from the viewpoint of legal, organizational, and technical arrangement.

Arman Melikyan - Today even if Baku does dictate the conditions for deploying Russian military contingent, it demands the presence of the Russian forces. What would you say to such an option: the whole territory around the currently abolished administrative borders of the former Autonomous Region of Nagorno Karabakh, with the exception of Berdsor/Lachin region, will be transferred in this manner or other under the control of the Azerbaijani military forces and administration, and the Russian peace-keeping contingent will be deployed in the remaining territory controlled by Stepanakert. At the same time, the status of the region, still populated by Armenians, will remain undetermined and will not become part of Armenia by any means. I think that Baku will be happy to agree to such an intermediate solution, because will only be the launch of the process. Taking into consideration the tendency of decreased and in certain parts of the post-Soviet space completely neutralized Russian influence, in ten-fifteen years’ time Azerbaijan may have a chance to “internalize” what will be left behind after the “voluntary, yet forced” withdrawal of the Russians.

Vyacheslav Mamedov - If we are to look at the international practices of “coercion to peace”, it is quite a lengthy procedure, requiring the resolution of the UN Security Council. This measure has not yet been fully applied to the parties of the conflict, for in case of “peace coercion” both the arms and military infrastructure of the conflicting parties, as well as the militia of conflict participants may be destroyed. Since these are truly extreme measures, they require for the resolution of the Security Council.
But since Russia is connected with Armenia and Azerbaijan within the CSTO and CIS, such radical means will never be applied even in case of a full-scaled war. That is why Russia’s actions have been much closer to what the term “peace maintenance” denotes. I am convinced that Russia will continue to make use of this very option to restrain the participants of the conflict.
But, certainly, both peace maintenance and a military action for the sake of “peace coercion” may be viewed only as temporary measures and cannot