The Velvet Revolution, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and the End of Karabakh
Armenian Politics Causing Its Own Catastrophe
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6458291 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Кимитака Мацузато (0000-0002-6995-7658, Distinguished Professor, Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies, Shanghai International Studies University Shanghai People’s Republic of China, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-33 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-11 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1075-1262 • E-ISSN: 1876-3324 |
| Publisher | Brill (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.30965/18763324-bja10124 |
| OpenAlex | W4412197640 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
The existing studies on the Second (2020) and the final Karabakh Wars (2023) can be divided into three groups, depending upon how they explain Armenia/Karabakh’s unexpectedly easy defeat. The first group emphasizes the Russo-Ukrainian War which forced Russia to concentrate on Ukraine and to refrain from protecting its traditional clients. The second group focuses on Azerbaijan’s (and partly Turkey’s) will and ability to make use of Russia’s retreat as a golden opportunity. The third group underscores Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s incompetent and reckless foreign and military policies. This study belongs to the third group. In the countries located in Russia’s Near Abroad, industrial decline and patronal politics hindered development of opposition parties, trade unions, and independent intellectuals. Instead, the geopolitical values of these countries induced the West to invest in local NGO s, which apparently substituted the role of opposition parties and civil society and eventually caused civil revolutions in Armenia, Ukraine, and Moldova. Yet the leaders whom these revolutions put in power lacked administrative experience and expertise, especially in diplomacy and military affairs. Unable to comprehend the institutional logic of the Karabakh peacekeeping system, Pashinyan destroyed it twice: the system led by the OSCE Minsk Group in 2020 and the post-2020 system highly dependent on Russia in 2022–23. Long before the Velvet Revolution of 2018, Karabakh politicians had become overdependent on their Armenian patrons, so they could not check Pashinyan’s suicidal Karabakh policy
Ancient history · Armenian · Art · Economic history · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Ukrainian · Velvet · European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies · European Politics and Security · History · Law · Philosophy · Post-Soviet Geopolitical Dynamics
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |