Diminishing Justice and Third-Party Intervention: Explaining Russia’s ImpartialStance During the 2020 Karabakh War

Abstract

This article examines Russia’s impartiality during the second Karabakh war between Azerbaijan andArmenia in 2020, despite its close military-strategic alliance with the latter. Russia’s behavior representsa twofold deviation: a weakening of its security commitments to Armenia, and a more balanced policy ina frozen conflict in the post-Soviet space. Four factors are examined that could account for explaining thispuzzle, namely increasing bandwagoning of Azerbaijan with Russia, rising opportunity costs of interven-tion due to Turkey’s support to Azerbaijan, Russia’s potential discontent with Armenia after the 2018Velvet Revolution, and the role of a justice motive in Russian policy toward the conflict.