Are Russia and Turkey Trying to Alter the Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process Format?

Confronted with widespread international criticism over its actions in Georgia, Russia is eager to show that it can still serve as a peace broker the post-Soviet area. A primary Kremlin aim appears to be checking any further advance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“The South Ossetian crisis will not constitute a precedent,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee on September 18. “We will continue to responsibly fulfill our mediation mission in the negotiation process and peacemaking [and] that fully applies to [the separatist conflicts of] Transdniester and Nagorno-Karabakh,” he said.

The signal the Kremlin wants to send is that “it is not restoring its empire and that it is ready to reconcile warring parties while playing a leading role in the process,” wrote Sergei Markedonov of the Moscow-based Institute for Political and Military Analysis in the September 16 issue of Russia’s “Kommersant” daily.

Russia has been expending a lot of energy since the August crisis to revive the Transdniester and Nagorno-Karabakh peace processes outside the framework of the existing international settlement mechanisms.

Concerning Karabakh, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met twice in September with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan and once with

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