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

Abstract

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