Ex-President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili posted about the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict on his Facebook page:
“I am urging all the sides for extreme caution and restraint as much as it is possible with regards to the military hostilities that erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“I have a following statement to make: all out the conflict is clearly not in interest of either Armenia or Azerbaijan, but what happened couple of days ago strongly resembles a trademark Russian provocation, this time directed against Azerbaijan and Turkey, which is harming Armenia as well. I always knew that Putin would use a lame duck status of the US administration for stirring up a major trouble. Moscow had been preparing for the unfreezing of the Karabakh conflict for quite some time already. It had been actively arming both sides, as well in recent years on Putin’s orders a military road from Dagestan into Georgia was constructed and it happens to be the shortest itinerary for military inroads into Azerbaijan.
“By stirring up the conflict Moscow will try to achieve several targets: seize the area with the main Azeri oil and gas pipelines, (they were already attacked by the Russians during Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008), and thus deprive Europe of alternative energy sources from Azerbaijan and potentially also from central Asia. This will put strongly independent minded government of Ilham Aliev into a very precarious situation. Moscow would also exercise strong military pressure on Georgia and blackmail it before this year’s parliamentary elections, where as it appears now pro Russian “Georgian Dream” governing coalition is doomed to fail. Putin will also severely complicate Turkey’s stance as Ankara will be forced to get engaged on two fronts simultaneously.
“I have been warning many western and regional leaders about these dangers for several years already and I strongly believe that all the sides need to exercise extreme caution and restraint and immediately cease the hostilities. We shall all wait until the moment when Putin will inevitably get weaker in the years to come and then find a negotiated settlement to the outstanding regional issues. Right now we are dealing with the situation when Putin had been preparing for quite some time, the West has been turning a blind eye on it and as always might be taken by surprise by the Russian actions”.
