Forecast: Russia`s influence in the South Caucasus, Central Asia and  Eastern Europe will decrease sharply

ArmInfo. The influence of the Russian Federation in the South Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe will sharply decrease in the foreseeable period. This is due  to the intermediate Ukrainian results of the geopolitical  confrontation between the Russian Federation and the collective West.   Independent political analyst Saro Saroyan expressed a similar  opinion to ArmInfo.

"In particular, the Russian Federation and Turkey have a very  specific plan regarding the South Caucasus, namely, to finally turn  the region exclusively into their zone of influence, excluding any  role of the West here. It is clear that this, in turn, implies the  withdrawal of the USA and the EU from the Karabakh settlement, along  with the destruction of the Armenian factor in the region. However,  the current course of military operations in Ukraine has completely  defeated the implementation of all these agreements between Moscow  and Ankara," he emphasized.  

According to the analyst, as a result, Moscow was forced to reckon  with the Brussels negotiation format between Armenia and Azerbaijan,  as well as some other new geopolitical realities in the region, which  still remains its priority zone of influence. While the beginning of  the Russian-Ukrainian war was laid precisely by the 44-day war. In  Saroyan's opinion, in this way, Russia tried to insure its southern  borders against possible destabilization, in fact, anticipating it.   And after that, try to solve its problems in Ukraine.  According to  him, all this was due to the impossibility for Russia to solve such  problems without the consent of Turkey.  

According to the analyst, over the past few hundred years, the  essence of relations between the Russian and Ottoman empires, by and  large, has not changed and, as before, rests on rivalry for the  straits and hegemony in the Black Sea. That is why Moscow did not  have the opportunity to resist the West, ensuring tectonic shifts in  Ukraine, in particular on the Black Sea coast, without agreements  with Ankara. And regarding Artsakh, Turkey and the Russian Federation  fulfilled the agreements. However, all this did not find a  continuation in the Ukrainian direction, primarily due to Moscow's  inability to force Kyiv to stop the war and secure its own  territorial and other acquisitions.