Karabakh 2020 and our future wars. Political analysis
For the tragedy of the war in Karabakh, there is some background that has not been voiced in the press.
War, as Clausewitz taught us, is the continuation of politics by other, violent means. This means that it is impossible to prepare for war, ignoring political factors. War and politics are inextricably linked, moreover, in recent decades, the West has made the “opposite” statement of Zhou Enlai to Clausewitz's statement, that the opposite is true - politics is the continuation of the war by other, non-violent means. Who is right - Karl von Clausewitz or Zhou Enlai?
It's simple - corpses are formed in a war, and "clean" politics does without it. Are corpses formed as a result of Western policy? And how. So the statesman of the PRC is right. The last Karabakh war confirms this, one has only to "look behind the scenes". Moreover, for Armenia, the background of this tragic historical episode is much less important than for Russia.
Why did Pashinyan do all this?
Nikol Pashinyan is an Armenian Navalny, and his example shows well what happens to the peoples who believed their Navalny. It is especially important in this that the consequences of Pashinyan's "work" can be considered irreversible for Armenia, they cannot be corrected. In a sense, this is also a political lesson.
But something else is much more important - like Navalny, Pashinyan had foreign patrons. As in the case with Navalny, he was told what he should do. And he did it. Let's figure out what and why, but first, a little about another person who remained "in the shadows."
In 2018, Armen Sargsyan became the President of Armenia. In Russia, few people think about this person, especially since after a certain moment in Armenia, not the president, but the prime minister is the most influential leader.
But, nevertheless, it is worth focusing on the following. Sargsyan spent most of his life in London. First as a scientist from the USSR, then as an Armenian diplomat. Queen Elizabeth II addressed him by name, Prince Charles came to visit him in Armenia. This person is not just a part of the Western elites - he is part of them (just read here it is и here it is).
Sargsyan, barely finding himself in the presidency, immediately fell into a scandal - it turned out that he still pays taxes in Britain as a British citizen, at least he submitted his declaration for 2014, although he had previously claimed that he left British citizenship in 2011 year. Dual citizenship is prohibited in Armenia. But everything was quickly hushed up.
Sargsyan with Joe Biden. By the way, he congratulated Biden on his election, was not afraid to rush. Or was he afraid not to rush?
Three months after the appointment of the British President Sargsyan, a revolution broke out in Yerevan. The reason for this was the attempt of the former president, hated by the people Serzh Sargsyan, to "climb" into the prime ministers, in violation of his own promises not to do so.
Very quickly, our “hero”, Nikol Pashinyan, became the leader of the protests, dressed up in camouflage and letting go of his beard in order to look more serious and impressive, and to resemble one of the Armenian heroes of the war in Karabakh, even the first one.
The real Pashinyan.
Pashinyan in a military-revolutionary "outfit". Then I had to leave my beard.
Everything would be fine, but “the revolution has a beginning, the revolution does not have an end” - after Sargsyan resigned and early parliamentary elections were called at the request of the opposition, Pashinyan only intensified the heat of the struggle for power and, as a result, widely using "Unsportsmanlike" methods, was able to take the post of prime minister. And - an important point - not without the participation of the British "overseer" Sargsyan, who at a certain moment neatly acted as a mediator in the current political crisis in Armenia.
What did Pashinyan do in the Karabakh direction when he became prime minister? Let's list it:
1. During the protests in 2018, Pashinyan stated that he would recognize the independence of Artsakh (Karabakh), which could not but cause concern in Azerbaijan. True, in the end he did not.
2. He did not disavow his old statements that there would be no compromises with Azerbaijan on the territories, as well as about the territorial claims of Artsakh to Azerbaijan.
3. Immediately after the inauguration, Pashinyan went to Karabakh, to the city of Shusha. The specificity of this place is that before the war and the collapse of the USSR, this city was almost completely inhabited by Azerbaijanis, but now they are naturally not there. There were heavy battles for Shusha in the first war: the Azerbaijanis from this city fired on Stepanakert, and the Armenians had to take it by storm. But given the events that followed his capture, the Armenians shouldn't have drawn attention to Shusha too often. Pashinyan, on the other hand, demonstratively arrived there, as if the prime minister had no other business, and arranged dances there in honor of the anniversary of the capture of the city by the Armenians. It is not difficult to understand what thoughts and emotions this trick aroused in Azerbaijan.
4. Pashinyan has repeatedly made statements on Karabakh openly provocative towards Azerbaijan.
It would seem that after all this, Pashinyan would have to sharply intensify contacts with the Russian Federation, on the one hand, because without Russia, Armenia could not fight off a much richer and more populated Azerbaijan, and on the other, help to strengthen the border with Azerbaijan. But Pashinyan behaved completely differently.
Let's briefly list his policy towards the Russian Federation:
1. Arrests, and illegal, of pro-Russian politicians.
2. The arrest of the Secretary General of the CSTO, a military structure that, in theory, would have to defend Armenia if something happened.
3. Abusive behavior towards the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin, to the extent that Pashinyan did not meet him at the airport during his visit to Yerevan in 2019. Putin's request to end the politically motivated persecution of Robert Kocharian was also ignored. If we list all of Pashinyan's anti-Russian demarches, then the whole article will not be enough. Something to see here.
What was the reason for this? There is a theory that Pashinyan is just an idiot. Those who think so should try to seize power in some country. Pashinyan could do it, albeit with outside help. Pashinyan is not an idiot, and his anti-Russian antics are due to the fact that his masters from the West, including the structures of the notorious George Soros, sought this from him.
The connections between Pashinyan and Soros, as well as his spitting in Russia, are described in more or less detail. here in this article in Gazeta.Ru, strictly required reading.
Naturally, various Western non-profit organizations such as Freedom House in Pashinyan simply “doted”, and in the Western press it was just a beacon of democracy.
But maybe at least Pashinyan somehow strengthened the defense of Artsakh? Also no, nothing has changed much in the two years of his premiership. Today they say that the Armenians had no money. But did they have picks with crowbars? Cement, reinforcement? Camouflage nets? Maybe at least the defensive positions needed to be properly equipped? Disguise from observation from above? The Armenians did NOTHING. Pashinyan, without doing ANYTHING, actively provoked Azerbaijan and severed ties with the Russian Federation - all at the same time.
And this is in the conditions when there were battles with Azerbaijan quite recently along the line of contact, when there was already a trend to "enter" the Transcaucasia of Turkey, in which the Armenians had once already been subjected to genocide, when in Azerbaijan people received their first captain and lieutenant shoulder straps. ALL LIFE we lived in an atmosphere of expectation of an Azerbaijani revenge in Karabakh, all, completely, from the moment when they learned to speak. And when Azerbaijan already had both numerical and qualitative superiority over Armenia. And a more powerful economy.
Through the eyes of Aliyev.
Let's look at the situation with the eyes of Azerbaijanis. The return of Karabakh, and especially the territories of Azerbaijan around it, was a fix idea, a "karmic debt" for all Azerbaijanis after defeat in the first war, it was no secret to anyone. The Azerbaijanis were very indiscriminate in their means in those years, but the Armenians also quite skillfully carried out ethnic cleansing, which became a serious "birth trauma" for Azerbaijan, which had lost the war.
National revenge was just a matter of time, and Azerbaijan was actively preparing for this revenge, first of all, by properly indoctrinating the youth. Whoever watched the online discussions at Azerbaijani forums in the 2000s and 2010s will not allow lying - the idea that "we have to do this" was simply unbreakable, this was their vision of reality, a future in which the Azerbaijani a soldier would not stand firmly on the land of the NKR, in Azerbaijan they could not imagine, even if for some reason they wanted. But they didn't want to.
Ilham Aliyev made a huge contribution to the acquisition of military capabilities for this. In 2020, Azerbaijani troops turned out to be trained, organized and motivated for battles with heavy losses, their technical support was sufficient to storm defensive positions in the mountains. Aliyev was also confident of strong support from his ally Turkey.
Everything was obvious for a long time.
Israel also made a significant contribution to the growth of Azerbaijan's military capabilities, and Russia also supplied Baku with modern weapon no limits.
But weapons and troops are one thing, and the political support of military operations is another. Aliyev knew that if something happened, both Russia and Iran could pull him down. Yes, so it happened the last time. And this problem was intractable - although Russia does not need such an “ally” as Armenia, but, alas, the situation obliges to intervene. That was until the moment when Pashinyan came to power in Yerevan.
And this factor changed everything - Pashinyan insulted the national pride of Azerbaijan as best he could, but at the same time, at the same time, he drove relations with Russia into a serious crisis. Pashinyan insulted Putin, provoked, or at least did not extinguish, anti-Russian sentiments in the country, and at the same time tried his best to get closer to the West.
What should Aliyev have thought at this moment? That there will be no other moment when Russia simply will not be able to “fit in” for Armenia, and it is necessary to attack now. So he did in the end, and we know the result today.
Let us ask ourselves the question - did not Pashinyan provoke this war with all these antics? If we admit that he did not provoke, then we must admit Pashinyan is an idiot, but we have just established that he is not an idiot, right? So.
Deliberate provocation.
Pashinyan deliberately provoked a conflict with Azerbaijan, today this is obvious. He did this because his owners demanded it from him, and he performed this task masterfully.
Why would the owners need it? Then, if Putin were not so cold-blooded, we would get involved in this war. Turkey in Transcaucasia is unprofitable for us, we do not need Syrian militants on the border with Dagestan. We also don't need the fact that someone is solving problems in the former USSR by force, all this does harm to us. Under these conditions, the use of force by Russia against Azerbaijan could not be recognized as impossible, at least its demonstration (what it turned out) during the Kavkaz-2020 command and control squad was directed specifically to Aliyev and Erdogan, who was behind him.
But, if we happened to get there, we would have to fight not only with Azerbaijan, but also with Turkey, and not only in Transcaucasia. And we were absolutely not ready for this, and we are not ready now. And no punches in the chest like the Caucasus-2020 exercises will deceive anyone.
The provocation of just such a war took place in Karabakh, and it was for him that the West pushed Pashinyan into the prime minister of Armenia. This whole multi-move was against us.
And the fury with which the pro-Armenian agitators intimidated us with Erdogan from all the alarm clocks during this war is very significant. Indeed, before, none of these people tried to warn Pashinyan at least remotely about how everything could end. And everything was obvious.
The fact that Soros's agent Pashinyan, who was nurtured by the British Sargsyan, did everything on purpose is indirectly documented. And the same indirect documentary evidence contains information about where we will "catch" the next blow.
RAND Report
In 2019, the well-known American RAND corporation, one of the most important military-political “thought factories” in the United States, released a report entitled “Extending Russia. Сompeting from Advantageous Ground ". The approximate meaning of this name without losing its meaning in Russian sounds like “Straining Russia. Competing from a position of advantage ”.
Report in different formats is available by the link on the RAND website, a paper version can also be purchased there.
The content of this document is extremely simple - it contains various possible options for the United States of America to conduct a policy that is harmful to Russia. The authors of the report in the preamble write in plain text that the purpose of the proposed measures is not to contain Russia (this is possible as a “bonus”), but to overstrain it, to harm it without slipping into military action.
The authors proposed various directions for putting pressure on the Russian Federation, from interfering with gas exports, to expanding the US military presence in Europe as an instrument of pressure on the Russian Federation. In principle, in an obvious way, after a few months, the United States began to act strictly in accordance with this report, pushing exactly the vulnerabilities pointed out by its authors. This means that there is a high degree of probability that the RAND algorithms were adopted by the Trump administration.
On the one hand, this gives us the opportunity to find out the future - the Americans kindly published their plans, and then by their actions showed that these are EXACTLY PLANS, and not just a conceptual document. They, of course, differ in some way from the actually taken actions that followed later, but any plan for a war or operation, or a decision to fight, differs from its own implementation - always. At least, it is obvious WHERE the Americans will conduct offensive subversive actions against us, and for what purpose.
On the other hand, this document gives us the opportunity to understand the past, including Karabakh.
In the chapter on the geopolitical “dimension” of pressure on Russia, RAND identifies the following possible leverage points:
1. Assistance with arms to Ukraine.
2. Strengthening support for the Syrian rebels.
3. Facilitating regime change in Belarus.
4. The use of "friction" in the Caucasus.
5. Reducing the influence of Russia in Central Asia.
6. Complication of Russia's presence in Moldova (Transnistria).
It is easy to see that with all the differences between the events that we observed in late 2019 - early 2020, from the published plans, with the directions of US attacks on our interests, RAND “guessed”.
That's it, point by point.
What did the report say about the situation in Zakaz'ye?
If we ignore what has been written about Georgia and attempts to get closer to Azerbaijan (which in reality did not exist), then the picture in RAND's analytics is as follows. To "strain" Russia and force it to spend additional funds and forces on strengthening the Southern Military District, it is necessary to try to tear Armenia away from Russia and turn it towards the West.
At the same time, it remains unclear how the fact of the existence of a dispute with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh will affect this maneuver of Armenia. The risk for the United States is Azerbaijan, which can replace Russia with Armenia as a partner or resolve the Karabakh issue by force. It is not clear to the US how to solve the Karabakh issue, NATO is pushing both Armenia and Azerbaijan to solve it with the help of Russia. It was emphasized that the involvement of the West in all these matters should be minimal, since with serious participation in the affairs of the region, it would be the West that would be “tense”, and not Russia.
Looks like what happened?
Yes, minus the fact that Pashinyan really teased Aliyev. Thus, it can be stated that the United States was interested in the region, saw the risks in it, planned actions in the Armenian direction, taking into account the PRESENCE of Pashinyan - they acted there (together with the British), and in the event of a war in Karabakh, they planned to “reel in fishing rods”. The goal is to force Russia to spend resources. Happened?
Happened.
Now we will keep 2000 soldiers in Karabakh to protect people there who, in large part, hate us, we have already lost two people killed and a helicopter there. And the United States, Soros and the West in general simply threw Pashinyan when he did what was required of him. And they did not fit in for Armenia, against which the Azeri risk had "shot" after all.
That is, RAND indicated the path, indicated the goal, the region and with whom in this region it is necessary to start, but during the implementation it did not work out as the corporation planned, while the desired result - the shackling of the resources of the Russian Federation in this "swamp", was nevertheless achieved ... The difference between the plan of the operation and its progress as it is.
However, we repeat once again - RAND is RAND, it is a private corporation, but what is actually planned in Washington and London may and does differ from analysts' plans, including in terms of goal setting. And if RAND could have a superficial attitude to the Turkish factor in Zakazye, then those people who make decisions on allocating resources for specific undertakings (Pashinyan) do not make such stupid mistakes. The Turkish factor was clearly taken into account in this multi-move.
Russia, unfortunately, missed the opportunity to solve the problem "inexpensively". Now we will get stuck there, and the Turkish influence will only increase. Nothing can be done now: we missed this blow. Will we miss the next one?
The next battlefield is Transnistria.
With all the drawbacks of a "reactive" strategy, we know where the enemy will hit next time. This is Transnistria. The point is vulnerable and dangerous. Technically, if at the same time Ukraine and Moldova embark on a blockade of Transnistria, then Russia will have no choice but to invade the territory of Ukraine or another military operation against this country. If the Ukrainian authorities do not respond to military losses with concessions, then in principle the Russian Federation will have only two options.
The first is the landing operation and the "breakdown" of the corridor to Tiraspol from the Black Sea. At the same time, we will face the risk of Romania joining the war, then NATO and, as a result, the United States, which by a certain moment can make the war nuclear. But you can't retreat either, this will not be the case.
The second option is, as Putin promised to do, if Ukraine provokes an aggravation of the war in Donbass during the FIFA World Cup, liquidate Ukrainian statehood and break through the "corridor" in Transnistria along the ground. Throughout Ukraine.
It is not hard to guess that these options can be incredibly expensive for the RF. Of course, the listed risks are maximum, in reality everything can end much easier, even Poroshenko did not dare to introduce a blockade of Transnistria, although this issue was discussed a couple of times. But there is no guarantee that it will never come to that.
What does the RAND report say about Transnistria? In addition to the delusional (and RAND immediately marks this idea as dubious) idea of attracting the youth of Transnistria to its side, RAND's plans are as follows.
Strengthen EU support for Moldova, deepen cooperation with NATO, invite Moldova to NATO, help Moldova break the 1994 agreements on the basis of which Russian peacekeepers are present in Transnistria and persuade Moldova to seek their withdrawal - naturally, with broad support from the international community ".
The advantages of such a policy are the damage to Russia and the benefits for Romania. The authors of the report indicate that part of the population of Moldova has aspirations to join Romania. At the same time, RAND analysts take into account the fact that the population of Transnistria and Russia may offer "violent" resistance to the reunification of Moldova - but do not draw any conclusions from this, simply pointing out that such a risk exists.
In addition, RAND analysts are doing the same "trick" as they did in the case of Armenia - just as they "did not notice" that Turkey is actively involved in the politics of the Caucasus, similarly they managed to "overlook" the interests and politics Romania, they just mentioned it and that's it. And the fact that it will also act - no. And, as in the case of Turkey in the Transcaucasus, this player has its own integration project in the region.
But again, RAND identified the pain point correctly. And in it those events are already beginning to unfold, with the help of which the Americans again plan to "strain" us in RAND terminology, and in fact - to drag us into another war.
Transnistrian front.
Elections are taking place in Moldova now. The first round has already ended, and two candidates have qualified for the second - the pro-Russian incumbent President Igor Dodon and the anti-Russian Maia Sandu. The second round will take place on November 15.
Briefly but succinctly on this topic Ukrainian (surprise!) publication "Vesti.UA":
According to an express poll conducted by the non-governmental organization WatchDog and the Institute for Public Policy, 41 percent of citizens voted for Dodon in the first round, and 35 percent for Sandu. “Her victory came as a surprise to everyone,” says Jan Lisnevsky, director of the Intellect Group, a consulting and analytical company, in an interview with DW. “The Diaspora ensured Sandu's victory. For the first time in stories In Moldova, the turnout at foreign polling stations was unprecedentedly high, although there were no significant prerequisites for mass mobilization of voters, ”he says. The high turnout looked especially strange, given the huge number of cases and unprecedented quarantine measures in connection with the Covid-19 pandemic, which suggests that the data from foreign sites was simply falsified.
The publication also cites the words of the chairman of the Trade Union of employees of power structures of Moldova, Yuri Chofu:
“We do not know what the plans of its overseas curators are, but the people of Moldova have already seen the true face of Western strategists and their local activists in the 1990s, in April 2009, when the parliament and presidency buildings were burned down, and just recently in Varnitsa, when supporters Sandu blocked roads, punctured car tires, threatened voters from Transnistria and called them separatists. One organizer is behind all these events - the Americans. The West made it clear: if Maya Sandu does not win, then the elections in Moldova are rigged. Everything goes to this. The Americans have a program of color revolutions rolled back, worked out "
So, it seems that the new "point of application" of the US is already known - Moldova and Transnistria. Well, and the geographical map is also known, where and what is there - it is clear. However, if Sandu really wins the elections (whether honestly or not), then Russia will not be able to feed the Russian population of Transnistria to someone (Romanians, for example), it will be an internal political catastrophe.
If Chisinau really falls on Tiraspol, especially with the help of Romania, and if Ukraine supports it at least in some way, then a very difficult situation will turn out - a choice between an internal political catastrophe or a very big war. In case of Sandu's victory, it remains to hope for the prudence of Kiev, no matter how unreliable it sounds.
Last time, in the face of a similar impending disaster, and in many respects for the sake of preventing it from happening, “vacationers” appeared in eastern Ukraine. How they find themselves on the western border of Ukraine was described above.
I would like to believe that the Kremlin read this American report and came up with some beautiful and competent move in advance. There is simply no time to start inventing it right now.
Conclusion.
As can be seen from everything that happened in Karabakh and what is happening now around Moldova, all these wars, although based on real and long-standing contradictions in the regions (Karabakh and Transnistria began without American participation), do not escalate on their own - they are skillfully exacerbated, and sharpen very cheaply. What turned out to be cheaper - hiring Pashinyan and a couple of hundred more unprincipled people like him, or our deployment of a peacekeeping contingent in Karabakh for an indefinite period?
Which will turn out to be cheaper - financing the activities of Maia Sandu or a potential landing operation with a "breakdown" of the corridor from the Black Sea coast to Transnistria?
Some domestic "political scientists" are beginning to realize that we are being "imprisoned", but the enemy is hiding absolutely nothing, all his directions for future efforts are not just obvious - they are spelled out in analytical reports and various documents, we know everything in advance, but here's why- So far, there has been no early reaction on the part of Russia that would have made it possible to stop threats in advance.
Wealthy America AGAIN spends disproportionately less to harm us than we do to deal with the consequences. Moreover, it acts "according to Zhou Enlai" - continuing the war by other, not violent means, but with the same corpses in the end.
How long will this continue? The question is open, but for now we are looking at the development of events in Moldova. And we are preparing for war.
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