BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov.3
Trend:
War is profitable for arms suppliers but threatens the participants in hostilities with bankruptcy, and in these terms, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is no exception, an article published on Russia's Rusbankrot.ru media outlet said, Trend reports.
According to the article, the colossal costs that both warring parties are forced to bear, coupled with human and material losses, can bankrupt even a confidently standing economy. However, for the economy of Armenia, already having a lot of due loans, the situation is even more critical.
“Armenia has already lost more than 250 tanks, air defense systems, hundreds of freight transport units, and artillery crews during the conflict. The destruction of command posts and ammunition depots also caused significant damage to the country,” stated the article. “Now the Armenian leadership is literally driven into a corner - how to repay the loans? After all, neither obtaining new loans nor trying to launch a printing press, accelerating the depreciation of the national currency, won’t help to solve any problem.”
“Back in July 2020, the volume of Armenia's public debt reached a record $8 billion. Global rating agencies downgraded the country's long-term rating, and Fitch predicted default for the state by the end of this year,” the article noted. “At the same time, the country is unlikely to be able to get decent loans from abroad, since there is a war going on, and the background for it is a pandemic - the domestic economy still cannot recover from the restrictions imposed by the state.”
“Experts point out that it is also not worth hoping for help from Russia to the Armenian leadership, since the Russian authorities don’t sympathize with the pro-Western orientation of Yerevan, outwardly maintaining neutrality. The criminal cases initiated in Armenia against subsidiaries of Russian Railways and Gazprom also don’t contribute to a positive attitude," added the article.
Armenian Armed Forces launched a large-scale military attack on positions of the Azerbaijani army on the front line, using large-caliber weapons, mortars, and artillery on Sept. 27.
Azerbaijan responded with a counter-offensive along the entire front. As a result of retaliation, Azerbaijani troops liberated a number of territories previously occupied by Armenia, as well as take important, strategic heights under control.
The fighting continued into October 2020, in the early days of which Armenia has launched missile attacks on Azerbaijani cities of Ganja, Mingachevir, Khizi as well as Absheron district.
Despite the fact that so far the parties have reached an agreement on a humanitarian ceasefire three times, Armenia continues to violate this agreement.
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, the 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 the withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding districts.