The parties to the Karabakh conflict are starting out on the rocky walk to peace; North Korea is here to stay as a nuclear power after adoption of constitutional amendment; and Washington seeking to take advantage of southern Syria protests to put pressure on Assad. These stories topped Friday’s newspaper headlines across Russia, according to TASS news agency.

 Media: Nagorno-Karabakh dissolves itself as parties to conflict begin rocky walk to peace

On September 28, the president of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) signed a decree dissolving the unrecognized state. While this makes for one less problem for Armenia and Azerbaijan, a plethora of explosive issues remain in the region, Kommersant notes.

Although appearing to be a mere formality, the NKR’s dissolution decree is an important document as it formalizes the processes taking on the ground and marks the start of attempts to begin restoring order, Olesya Vartanyan, senior South Caucasus analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG), said.

Director of the Baku-based Caucasus Center for Political Analysis Ahmad Alili points out that the decree is crucial for Azerbaijan: "Had this step not been taken, someone could have been expected to try to establish a government in exile." When commenting on the prospects for setting up an inland transport link between ‘mainland’ Azerbaijan and its landlocked exclave region of Nakhchivan through Armenia (the Zangezur Corridor), Alili noted that Russia and Turkey were also interested in implementing the initiative.

"On the one hand, with the Karabakh issue off the table, the parties may speed up movement toward a peace treaty," Sergey Markedonov, senior researcher at the Center for Euro-Atlantic Security at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University), noted. "However, there are still a lot of questions. Armenia might say: ‘We have recognized Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, so let’s respect ours, too.’ But will Azerbaijan be ready for that?" the expert asked rhetorically.

The difficult domestic political situation in Armenia is obstructing the path to a peace treaty, Stanislav Pritchin, an expert at the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International Relations, told Vedomosti. "The situation has not changed drastically even though there is a mitigating factor now that the Karabakh issue has been closed," the expert said. He expects that under the new situation the West will seek to expand its presence in the South Caucasus. According to Pritchin, both Armenia and Azerbaijan are interested in that because Yerevan is frustrated with Moscow’s policy while Baku is looking to improve relations with the West amid criticism of its blockade of Karabakh. However, it is Russian peacekeepers that are working to ensure the safety of the local Armenian population and there are no other tools in sight yet to maintain stability, the analyst stressed.

 Media: Security-minded North Korea gate-crashing its way into global nuclear powers club

Pyongyang has amended the constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to officially enshrine a state policy for the development of nuclear forces. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pointed out that the relevant amendment would help the nation maintain "a certain advantage" in containing threats. Kim said that he viewed the United States and the US-created "Asian version of NATO," which includes Japan and South Korea, as "the worst actual threat" to the DPRK. He also highlighted the imperative need to strengthen solidarity with those countries opposing Western hegemony, Izvestia notes.

According to Vasily Kashin, director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics (HSE University), the DPRK’s constitutional amendment effectively makes denuclearization a moot question as North Korea is clearly not planning to abandon its nuclear weapons. "North Korea is nearing a very important milestone, where it will complete tests of its intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting targets on the North American continent and move on to their deployment. This will be a turning point, meaning that North Korea is becoming the third country after Russia and China to have a relationship of mutual nuclear deterrence with the US," the expert explained.

According to Kashin’s logic, the rapid development of North Korea’s nuclear and missile program will inevitably compel Washington to seek to launch a dialogue with Pyongyang. Events are rapidly moving toward a situation where, in the near future, it will simply be impossible to ignore North Korea any longer.

Darya Seleznyova, an expert with the Center for International Security at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International Relations, believes that the move to amend the North Korean constitution was a purely symbolic one, aimed at reminding the world that the country does indeed possess nuclear weapons and no longer intends to engage in any talks on denuclearization. Washington and Pyongyang took tentative steps toward improving relations under former US President Donald Trump, but no major breakthroughs were achieved, and incumbent US President Joe Biden does not view the issue as a priority, the expert told Kommersant. "Kim Jong Un at first expressed his readiness for talks but it seems that he was later disappointed with it all. The result was last year’s [adoption of the] law on North Korea’s nuclear status, which has now been enshrined in the constitution," the analyst added.

 Nezavisimaya Gazeta: US to take advantage of southern Syria unrest to put squeeze on Assad

The Biden administration has expressed support for protests in southern Syria as the US Department of State made contact with one of the spiritual leaders of the minority Druze community in Suwayda Province. Western experts are confident that Washington could find this to be an effective lever for putting pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes.

Anti-government protests re-emerged in southern Syria this summer, triggered by deteriorating living conditions, particularly with the revocation of state subsidies for a number of essential goods. What makes these demonstrations significant is that, from the very start, the protesters have made expressly political demands on the central government in Damascus, returning to the practice of roughly ten years ago, or the era of the burgeoning Arab Spring.

Independent Syrian political scientist Mahmoud al-Hamza told the newspaper that the Suwayda protests have enormous potential. "They are getting increasing support in Syria among various strata of society, as well as in the Syrian [diaspora] community overseas," he said. The expert believes that a body to manage the situation may be established in Suwayda. Also, Al-Hamza pointed to numerous signs of public discontent in the country’s coastal areas, which have traditionally been loyal to the Damascus authorities. "However, not a single person is being allowed to take to the streets there; protests are being suppressed even though the situation is explosive. One way or another, Assad won’t be able to keep it under control for long," the expert emphasized.

Researchers at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) said that the growing tensions in Syria’s southern regions that came back under Assad’s control in 2018 are providing the Biden administration and its regional partners with an opportunity to extract concessions from Assad at the negotiating table. Although the experts do not expect the central government to collapse in the near future, the increasing scale of the anti-government demonstrations could still force Damascus to take a more active role on certain issues.

 Nezavisimaya Gazeta: US agribusiness potentially driving Kiev’s demand to access EU market

Ukrainian Deputy Economy Minister Taras Kachka has stated Kiev’s readiness to drop the lawsuits it had brought against three EU countries in the World Trade Organization (WTO) contesting these countries’ extension of restrictions on Ukrainian agricultural exports. According to the Kiev official, Ukraine’s condition for calling off the lawyers is a guarantee from Brussels that there will be no more grain export bans in the future. However, since a significant volume of Ukrainian grain is grown on lands owned by US agribusiness giants, an analogy of the roles played by Ukrainian grain and US liquified natural gas (LNG), which had earlier been imposed on EU member states, would appear to be entirely apropos here, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes, citing experts.

In the middle of the month, the European Commission lifted the grain export ban that had been in effect for five EU countries bordering Ukraine since the spring of 2023. However, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia moved independently to extend their own restrictions on agricultural exports from Ukraine. In response, Kiev filed lawsuits against them at the WTO and put forward a plan to resolve the grain conflict on September 26, which stipulates the need to agree on four groups of Ukrainian agricultural exports. Polish Agriculture Minister Robert Telus told reporters on Thursday, following online talks with Ukrainian counterpart Nikolay Solsky, that the latter had reassured him that if Warsaw opposed the export of four grain crops through the end of the year, Kiev would not issue licenses for them. Telus termed this proposal a good idea because it would be up to Poland to make a decision.

It is a well-known fact that US companies stand behind Ukrainian grain producers, said Andrey Suzdaltsev, political scientist at the Higher School of Economics (HSE University). The US openly supports Ukrainian grain exports to the European Union, trying to influence Brussels to ensure the free flow of Ukrainian goods to European markets. "However, I don’t think it will help. The authorities in Eastern Europe will continue to block Ukrainian grain exports until Poland holds its parliamentary elections on October 15 as the ruling Law and Justice Party [PiS] is highly dependent on the farmer vote at this point," Suzdaltsev noted.

Still, in the expert’s words, economic estimates show that future decisions on opening European markets for Ukrainian agricultural goods will still be fraught with risks for Poland, Bulgaria and other heavily agricultural countries in the EU. It may have a devastating impact on them given the potential of Ukraine’s agricultural sector.

Vedomosti: Economic authorities discuss Russia’s future after victory over sanctions

Russia’s economy has coped with sanctions, largely by refocusing from Western markets to Eastern ones but it is too early to celebrate because the country’s new partners will not do anything for free. This is the conclusion that participants in the plenary session of the Moscow Financial Forum came to, Vedomosti notes.

The discussion brought together Russian Presidential Aide Maxim Oreshkin, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov, Central Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin and VTB CEO Andrey Kostin.

After sanctions were introduced, everyone realized that Russia had entered a new environment, which, fortunately, turned out to be viable, Sofya Donets, Russia and CIS economist at the Renaissance Capital investment company, said. Vladimir Klimanov, director of the Center for Regional Policy at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), in turn, pointed to Kostin’s remark that the structural transformation of the national economy had only just begun. Sanctions are expected to intensify so we will have to go through a transformation, he noted.

The Russian economy has indeed been able to adapt to the already introduced restrictions but as the sanctions process continues new challenges may emerge, Natalia Orlova, chief economist at Alfa-Bank, emphasized. The geographical reconstruction of the Russian economy has strengthened the positions of our new partners, she explained.

Klimanov believes that there are quite a number of factors that could help Russia achieve an economic breakthrough. Conditions need to be created for investing available funds, he noted. Other drivers for the economy may include budgetary injections, exchange rate fluctuations and a shift to new markets.

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