And Why? if the deal is done.
More Tensions between Armenia-Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan acquires new missiles in escalating arms race with Armenia
The acquisition also complicates Yerevan's relations with Belarus, which is a treaty ally of Armenia but sold the weapons to its enemy, Azerbaijan.
Joshua Kucera Jun 12, 2018
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and a newly acquired Belarusian Polonez multiple-launch rocket system. (photo: president.az)
Azerbaijan has displayed new missiles it has bought from Belarus and Israel, the latest escalation in the arms race between it and Armenia.
The new weapons – the Belarusian Polonez multiple-launch rocket system and the Israeli LORA tactical ballistic missile system – were rolled out on June 11. Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev visited a new missile unit, which is equipped with both the Polonez and LORA. Official photos showed him sitting behind the wheel of the truck-mounted Polonez.
Azerbaijan's interest in the Polonez has been known for some time; Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov visited Minsk last year and was photographed next to a Polonez system. It was later reported that Armenia – a treaty ally with Belarus in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – managed to block the sale. But in April, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that the deal had gone through. Now it's been confirmed.
The LORA is more of a surprise, as Azerbaijan's interest in it had not been previously reported. Azerbaijani news site haqqin.az called the dual acquisitions “sensational news.”
Both weapons act as a response of sorts to Armenia's 2016 acquisition of Iskander missiles, which gave Yerevan an unprecedented capability to strike targets deep in Azerbaijani territory. While the Polonez and LORA aren't exactly comparable to the Iskander, they nevertheless give Azerbaijan an analogous ability to strike deep in Armenian territory: the LORA reportedly has a 300-kilometer range and the Polonez, 200 kilometers. The version of the Iskander that Armenia has has a range of about 280 kilometers.
All this raises the specter of a much deadlier war should full-scale conflict erupt some day between the two states, which remain locked in a simmering conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Armenian soldiers and politicians regularly threaten Iskander strikes on strategic objects of the oil industry of Azerbaijan, including near Baku. Now Azerbaijan has weapons with which Baku can carry out destructive counterstrikes against any military target not only in the occupied territories in Karabakh, but also in Armenia,” Azerbaijani military analyst Azada Isazade told the website Caucasian Knot.
It also complicates Yerevan's relations with Minsk.
“Considering that Belarus is a friendly nation, participates with us in many multilateral formats and has treaty obligations toward us, it's insulting that Belarus would sell weapons to a state in conflict with us,” said Ruben Rubinyan, a deputy Armenian foreign minister, in response to Azerbaijan's acquisitions. “And we will, as before, and in the future, raise these issues in the corresponding manner. I think it's not entirely logical, considering the friendly alliance between Armenia and Belarus.”
As such, the Belarus-Armenia tension is a sort of miniature version of the Russian practice of selling Azerbaijan weapons while maintaining a strategic relationship with (and offering military aid to) Armenia.
Belarusian analyst Valeriy Karbalevich explained the deal by pointing out that cash means a lot more than anything in the CSTO.
“Azerbaijan has money, petrodollars, and they're ready to pay,” he told the news website naviny.by. “And in general, the CSTO is a very strange alliance. It was created only to demonstrate loyalty to Russia, and there are practically no common geopolitical interests between Belarus and Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan [the other members of the CSTO]. And several of the allies quite actively cooperate with NATO. So this alliance is feeble.”
As it happened, the same day Aliyev showed off the missiles, the CSTO held a meeting of foreign ministers in Kazakhstan. One can expect that the acquisition was part of the discussion.
https:// eurasianet.org/s/azerbaijan-acquires-new-missiles-in-escalating-arms-race-with-armenia
Tensions in ASTANA between US-Russia
Report: Russia chides Kazakhstan on US cooperation
Moscow is apparently unhappy at Astana granting the U.S. access to Caspian ports for cargo transit to Afghanistan.
Report: Russia chides Kazakhstan on US cooperation
Moscow is apparently unhappy at Astana granting the U.S. access to Caspian ports for cargo transit to Afghanistan.
Jun 12, 2018
Russia’s top diplomat has reportedly chided Kazakhstan over Astana’s decision to provide the U.S. military with logistical assistance for its operations in Afghanistan without first consulting Moscow.
Kommersant newspaper reported that during a June 11 meeting of officials from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, a Moscow-led analogue of NATO, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov subjected his Kazakh counterpart, Kairat Abdrakhmanov, to a series of what the outlet called “uncomfortable questions.”
Lavrov apparently made his complaints in relation to a recent agreement for Kazakhstan to allow the United States to use two of its Caspian Sea ports, Aktau and Kuryk, as transit points for shipping strictly nonmilitary material to Afghanistan. He is also said to have complained about the appearance of a U.S.-funded structure in Almaty called the Central Reference Laboratory, which is designed to research contagious animal and human diseases.
Kommersant based its report on the revelations of an unnamed member of the Russian delegation at the CSTO meeting.
Moscow appears quietly discomfited by the perception of subtle progress by Washington in cementing its influence in the region. Recent high-profile visits to Washington by President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Uzbek leader Shavkat Mirziyoyev received the kind of coverage back home never afforded to trips to Russia, which are a dime a dozen.
The initiative to get an agreement on the use of the Caspian ports appears to have been a fillip by Nazarbayev’s meeting with President Donald Trump, who used the encounter to commend Astana for granting U.S. forces “continuous logistical support and access to Afghanistan.” Definitive approval for this arrangement was granted in May.
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Kommersant’s diplomatic source described that agreement as an “unpleasant surprise.”
"There is no economic and logistical justification for this Caspian port route. We presume that the Americans needed it in order to maintain a presence on the Caspian, so that their infrastructure will appear here,” the source said.
The Russian official also complained that Kazakhstan not only failed to consult with Moscow on these plans, but that it didn’t even inform Russia.
There are a few problems with this claim. A legislative bill on granting the U.S. access to the Caspian ports for the purpose of delivering goods to Afghanistan was presented to Kazakhstan’s parliament in January and has been amply reported upon since that time. It took two months of discussion before that bill was approved and about the same period for Nazarbayev to give it his definitive thumbs-up. To describe this iteration as a surprise is stretching a point.
Abdrakhmanov reportedly stressed to Lavrov that none of this meant that the U.S. would gain a military foothold in Kazakhstan’s Caspian ports, but that does not appear to have convinced the Russian.
Objections to the Central Reference Laboratory, which has similarly U.S.-funded analogues in Armenia, Ukraine and Georgia, arguably make even less sense.
"Our security services and scientists are really worried by the appearance of these laboratories. It is not ruled out that these may somehow later be used against us. Moscow would like to have access to these laboratories,” said Kommersant’s diplomatic source.
A better sense of Russia’s complaints is rendered by a 2016 piece on Kremlin-run news website, Sputnik, which detailed Moscow’s worries over “the alarming rise of U.S. bio-defense labs on Russia's borders.” By way of substantiation for its argument, Sputnik approvingly cites a piece by conspiracy theory-mongering website infowars.com, which argues that the “next stage of development of Ukrainian democracy might be an accidental outbreak of a virus” unleashed by one of the U.S. labs.
The reality is likely that while Russia may claim to be irked by certain types of cooperation, it is not so much the actual cooperation itself that stings, so much as the willingness of former Soviet subjects to pursue those projects without asking Moscow first. The default Kremlin position is that Washington is pursuing a policy of peeling Central Asia away from Russia and nudging it toward greater engagement with southern neighbors, like Afghanistan and Pakistan. Speaking at the UN Security Council in January, Lavrov argued that efforts to foster a north-south divide “are dictated not by the interests of economic development but by geopolitics,” and he called on the West "not to put Central Asian nations in front of a false choice.”
While the merits of this argument, which are rationally formulated, can be debated, any behavior that fuels the perception that Russia is demanding to have a say in the foreign and even domestic policy of allied sovereign states will not go down well. Kazakhstan is and will likely long remain a steadfast friend to Russia, but any interference will doubtless only help the cause of those who lobby for a strategic Plan B.
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Azerbaijan is black hat also?
Turkey/Pakistan are their providers of armament.
kill box X3
A that ritythm. Mexico is afghanistan.
60/30%
All America?
Out of the US?
ES wants to arm Cuba and after Latin America for the war.
They're the capital of Evil Anon.
The True president of France
Macron is a true joke. that is true press.