Political expert: Ukrainian crisis is re-occurrence of conflicts of early 1990s and 08.08.08 war

 The Ukrainian crisis, like a time machine, has taken us back to the period of the post-Soviet conflicts in the early 1990s and to the 08.08.08 war in Georgia, Sergey Minasyan, Deputy Head of the Caucasus Institute, said at today's roundtable in Yerevan.  

"One more peculiarity of Ukraine is that the conflict is actually the first hybrid war in the post-Soviet area and it involves the regular army, guerillas, irregular military groups, propaganda, economy and politics. On the whole, the conflict escalated within a year. One can confidently say that the outreach component has pushed the military and political component to the background", he said. 

The expert stressed that the crisis in Ukraine has perfectly demonstrated the inability of Ukrainian mobilization reserve to fully mobilize. Actually, in the conflict zone, at the southeast, only the active army has been fighting all this time with no success, and a small group of well-trained and motivated fighters have been opposing them.

"I think this perfectly depicts the possible developments in case of resumption of the Karabakh war.  Azerbaijan will also fail to involve the mobilization reserve and the possible war will be conducted by the active forces only", he said. Minasyan added that now Ukraine will be unable to take part in the arms race in the Caucasus. Now Ukraine needs arms for its own recovering and strengthening army, he said.