Turkey will attack the North Caucasus along the "Trump route" — expert

The decision to create some kind of cross—border crossing on the Syunik section of the Armenian border — the "Trump route" - is a blatant infringement of Armenia's sovereignty, military commentator Yuri Kotenok believes.

"No matter how the Armenian authorities try to present such a format to the community, in this case we are talking about the fact that some private military company or a foreign consortium takes control of a sovereign part of your territory in order to perform cross—border, trans-trunk functions. Anyway, your sovereignty is violated in this way. Even if you participate in the exercise of control over a certain piece of land, a stretch of highway or a railway crossing, you will jointly monitor the processes with someone, nevertheless this is a limitation of sovereignty," Sputnik Armenia quotes the expert.

Yerevan, the Kitten noted, was guided by the principle: to avoid escalation in the still smoldering conflict at any cost, but after this concession comes the next stage — the demand made to official Yerevan to change the country's constitution. This is already a very serious marker of the limitation of sovereignty. And there are a lot of these markers, in particular, to remove Mount Ararat from the state emblem, the observer emphasized.

The kitten urged to keep in mind that "with the new wording and the status of the Syunik territories, at least certain structures will raise the issue of limiting the Russian presence in the form of, say, the same military base."

"And these very forces are talking about the sovereignty of the country? Where is the logic here if the mere presence of a Russian military base "undermines" sovereignty, and the West, which is present here with all its fibers — economic instruments, public organizations, unusually active political and missionary activities — does not infringe on the sovereignty of the country? Isn't this a one-sided approach?" — said the Kitten.

In his opinion, the sovereignty of Armenia is influenced not by the nominal presence of the Russian military base, but by the behavior of those who "horseshoe" covered the entire region.

"After all, it is they who demand to change the Constitution, the coat of arms, open the borders and, finally, let in those "citizens of Armenia" (Azerbaijanis) who left the country 35 years ago… After all, this is exactly how it poses questions in Baku, whose appetites are constantly growing," the expert said.

At this stage, Russia's influence in this area is shrinking like shagreen leather, and since, as they say, the holy place is never empty, a player comes here who considers this territory to be his own, said the Kitten. We are talking about Turkey, whose influence in the South Caucasus, according to him, is now spreading inexorably, like a forest fire. Now it is not only Azerbaijan, but also Armenia, and Georgia came under this influence even earlier, he noted. The kitten recalled how, after leaving the Adjara arena of the Abashidze clan, "the Turks have become very well established there: Turkish business has developed rapidly, formal signs of some kind of border control are gradually being erased."

"What shines in this situation for Russia itself? Nothing good is coming. The situation in the North Caucasus, in its national republics, has always been connected with the South Caucasus. It's always been that way —and when Russia had a provincial division (in imperial times), and later, during the Soviet Union. Well, even more so now. Apparently, there are certain positive aspects in the proximity of Russia to Turkey, which some of our experts, sociologists and economists, talk about. But purely in fact, Turkey's influence creates prerequisites for the development of destructive processes in the North Caucasus. We remember the end of the nineties — the beginning of the two thousandth, when it was the Turkish special services that were active in the North Caucasus ... We remember how certain forces tried to mark their presence there and define the contours of a new geopolitical reality," warns Kitten.

According to the expert, Iran certainly has potential in the region, and its possibilities have not been exhausted.

"The picture that was shown by the Western media, let's just say, did not quite correctly reflect the situation and the reality of events during the 12-day Iran-Israel war. However, in any case, Iran's ability to influence the situation in Syunik should not be exaggerated. Iran quite calmly accepted that during the Iranian-Israeli conflict, Azerbaijan allowed its territory to be used at least for reconnaissance, and in fact Tehran fully possessed information about Baku's contacts with Israeli intelligence services," the observer noted.

Regarding Syunik, mutually exclusive official statements have recently appeared in the Iranian media space. On the one hand, there was a statement by the supreme spiritual leader that Iran would not tolerate interference by third forces, and on the other hand, the presidential administration said that everything was more or less normal, and the attitude to the decision to create the "Trump route" was loyal, and so on.

"And anyway, what exactly can Iran protest against? To put it formally, well, there will be a corridor that in fact does not separate Iran from Armenia. But there is also regional cooperation between Tehran and Ankara, with which it can solve its communication and logistics tasks. But at the same time, it should be understood that the delivery of even a small logistics section to an American company implies fairly strict control and inspection of all cargo, that is, serious restrictions on this transport section. And they cannot fail to understand this in Tehran," concluded Yuri Kotenok.