Lavrov: Regulated carelessness bordering on callousness

By Orkhan Amashov

One is not bound to be tormented with an obsessive-compulsive propensity for diplomatic punctuality or pedantic unambiguity so as to discern recurrent errors of judgement that manifest themselves in the language employed by Russian officials or in semi-official sources linked with the Kremlin.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's later-rectified 'Farrukh blunder’ may appear to be a relatively insignificant moment in the grand scheme. However, since the import of such a mistake has implications extending to the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, it may also be symptomatic of something bigger, more pernicious and vile.

During a press conference in Yerevan on 9 June, Lavrov, whilst dealing with a question related to the recent escalation around the Farrukh village, stated that there is an understanding that "as part of the ongoing substantive work on delimitation, these issues will be definitely considered and resolved".

This was a clear and indubitable mistake, a statement casting an aspersion on Azerbaijan's sovereignty, and demonstrated a degree of carelessness which no official of any country desirous of maintaining good relations with Baku should have allowed to happen, let alone a veteran foreign minister of a country with which Azerbaijan has recently upgraded its relations to the level of alliance and which is a meditator within a trilateral format designed to address a wide range of post-war agenda issues.

These are the elements that must have been borne in the minds of those responsible for Azerbaijani foreign policy. But diplomacy is not about impetuous outbursts. Instead of working itself up to a pitch of impatience and nervous agitation, Baku issued a statement and, employing a cold and measured tone, declared that the delimitation commissions were set up to delimit the interstate border between the two countries and that this process did not envisage any issue outside this scope, including those related to the Azerbaijani territories where the Russian peacekeeping contingent was temporarily deployed in line with the 10 November trilateral declaration.

The Kremlin resorted to a safe exit mode by silently rectifying the verbal mistake made by Lavrov and amending his words in the transcript of the press conference published via the official website of the Foreign Ministry. The new version reads that "we expect that the launch of the process of delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border will increase confidence between Baku and Yerevan and prevent incidents like Farrukh in the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping contingent".

This does not amount to an outright retraction. The purpose of an official minute is to express a stated view in the best light or in its most correct form. The Russian official position is that this is exactly what Lavrov meant to say, or what he said for any practical purpose.

Beyond diplomatic rigmarole or artful techniques of putting oneself in the right, there is a far more important aspect that must be taken into account. Lavrov's presently rectified blunder appears to be part of a disturbing pattern that has a past. It seems to be an exercise of "regulated carelessness" which, on occasion, may border on callousness.

The use of certain terms that Baku finds archaic and unacceptable, and the inducement of deliberate ambiguity in relation to certain key issues are the ways by which Moscow has repeatedly caused consternation for Baku. Given the time-honoured traditions of Russian diplomacy, it requires some stretching of one's credulous imagination to convince oneself that unfortunate incidents were the result of innocent mistakes and not of deliberate intent.

A smart aleck of Kremlinite tendencies may butt in with unflinching urgency here and opine that Baku-Moscow relations have been built on firm foundations and no good will come out of ascribing disproportionate significance to slips and blunders, albejt retrospectively rectified, by Russian officials.

This is only half-true. The relations between the two nations are indeed sufficiently strong to remain unaltered by occasional gusts of winds of nefarious disposition, yet any nuance remotely related to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan is deadly important, to be addressed forthwith and with unmistakable clarity to boot.