Andrew Mueller explains why Vladimir Putin fancies himself as a peacemaker between Azerbaijan and Armenia while his own country wages war. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
After days on a razor's edge, Ukraine is now a nation at war.
Just hours ago, Russian forces began their attack.
President Vladimir Putin warning other countries that any attempt to interfere with the Russian action will lead to, quote, consequences they have never seen.
What with one thing and another, President Vladimir Putin of Russia must be considered a long shot for the Nobel Prize for Peace.
He has nevertheless this week pitched himself as a great reconciler.
On a state visit to one of the few countries still willing to kick the red carpet in the direction of his aeroplane, specifically Azerbaijan, Putin declared that he would be delighted to facilitate the signing of a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and its neighbour Armenia.
Two countries frequently at odds.
I emphasize that Russia will continue to contribute in every interaction and the conclusion of a peace treaty on the basis of the well known trilateral agreements reached by the presidents of Russia, Azerbaijan and the Prime Minister of Armenia in 2022.
Alert listeners will have spotted the cue there for a potted history lesson compressing the last century and change of ferocious rancor into a couple of hundred words or so.
Before we return to the present day, strap yourselves in and we'll be needing some peering through time's swirling mists.
MUSIC the first conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, as we now recognize them, occurred in 1918.
Both countries declared independence on May 28 that year, bolting from Russia's collapsing empire as attention in the far off power centers of Moscow and St.
Petersburg was consumed by revolution and civil war.
Not for the last time, however, there was disagreement over where one country stopped and the other began.
Both contributing to and exacerbating all of this were some of the fundamental schisms that beset the Caucasus as grimly as they do, for example, the Balkans.
Azerbaijanis are mostly Muslims, Armenians mostly Christians.
Azerbaijan's language is officially written in the Latin Alphabet, Armenians in a very pretty one of their own inventions.
There is doubtless also an interminable simmering row over ownership of a particular local comestible that both sides insist they cooked first.
Fighting in these inaugural hostilities continued for two years, until the Red army descended and made everyone's mind up for them.
Azerbaijan and Armenia were both incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.