Baku, Azerbaijan, April 5
By Elmira Tariverdiyeva - Trend:
The situation emerging in the Russian media over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is admittedly difficult for Baku, says Alexander Karavayev, leading expert of the Political Science Center 'North-South'.
Karavayev commented on the biased anti-Azerbaijani position of many Russian media outlets.
Karavayev said that the reason of such a difficult situation is that the influence of the Armenian interests on the Russian media has been evident and has been growing for a long time.
"The growing influence is connected with several factors," he told Trend by phone. "The first factor is a longstanding complementary attitude towards Armenia and Armenian culture, which has been created by the Armenian diaspora in Russia."
"This was directly implemented and used at the beginning of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict," he said. "Without going into details, the individuals having the liberal-minded public opinion in Russia perceived the Armenian version of the conflict as the only true variant."
The expert said that the Armenian diaspora's positions in various spheres of Russia's social and economic life, are strong enough, adding that this was also a factor influencing the conflict before its aggravating.
The expert said that Baku was not ready for such a situation.
"If Baku had been an initiator of this military campaign, it would have been prepared for it in terms of information," the expert said. "Perhaps, the Azerbaijani embassy in Russia would have created a staff, which had been organizing the daily press briefings."
"Certainly, groups of journalists would have been sent as part of the press-tours to the territories shelled by the Armenian armed forces," the expert said.
The expert added that it is not late to take such actions now.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers.
The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. More than 370 Armenian soldiers, 12 tanks, 12 armored vehicles and 15 artillery guns have been destroyed from April 2 until today.