Nagorno Karabakh

The case of the frozen conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh unlike other frozen conflicts of the Former Soviet Union is in the backstage of the regional and broader attention. While the recent developments with three other countries of European Union Eastern Partnership – Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova – signing the Association Agreement with the EU  give it  now a formal justification - there are a few more substantial reasons for that, the  main of which is its complexity.

Though in early 2016 policy-makers and policy analysts on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict warned of “un-freezing of the conflict”, there seemed to be a consensus among the majority of observers that a major escalation of the conflict was unlikely. Then, in April 2016, came the “four day war”. Several months later, in summer 2016, some experts warned of a possible repetition of April events. Indeed, since then numerous violent incidents in the zone of conflict took place, however, so far the predictions about a possible repetition of April events have failed to materialize.

From the outset, Germany’s chairmanship of the OSCE, in 2016, promised to be fraught with sizable challenges. One of these challenges came from the recent developments in the South Caucasus, which demonstrated with renewed force that national boundaries in the post-Soviet space, and thus the security situation, are still far from stable.