Azerbaijan has been successful in recent days enhancing its own territory in Jabrayil and Fuzuli districts, said former US ambassador to Azerbaijan, former co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Matthew Bryza in an exclusive interview with AZERTAC.

The former ambassador said it has recaptured and liberated significant amount of that territory based on reports he has seen, including Fuzuli city. On the course of events, Mr. Bryza noted: “I think Azerbaijan is going to continue its operations in those two districts until it feels like it is liberated, regained, enough of those districts to be politically significant and to be defensible in other words to make it difficult for Armenia to make a counter-attack and retake those Azerbaijani territories.”

On counter-operations carried out by Azerbaijan, he said the country is pursuing a relatively careful, step-by-step approach of using its superiority in electronic warfare and in numbers, in unmanned vehicles to destroy Armenian key military assets, air defence systems, S-300 system and etc. “If Azerbaijan can successfully continue and finish these operations, it will have position itself very well with the strong negotiating position; restart the talks, hopefully under the Minsk Group with the Armenian side.”

On cause of Armenia`s attack to civilians, Mr. Bryza commented: “I think Armenia is attacking these civilian targets in the rest of Azerbaijan out of sense of desperation. I think the Armenian side sees that Azerbaijan`s military offensive is increasingly successful and Armenia is unable to stop it. Armenia is trying to do two things I believe. One is to provoke Azerbaijan to respond with similar attack against civilian targets in Armenia, which I believe Prime Minister Pashinyan that thinks could bring in Collective Security Treaty Organization and Russia. Secondly, I think goal of the Armenian side is to frighten the Azerbaijani people, therefore we can resolve of Azerbaijan to continue with its military offensive to recapture Azerbaijan`s own territory in Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.”

News.Az