Analyst: Minsk Group dissolution helps erase accountability for Azerbaijan's crimes against Armenians

Political analyst Hakob Badalyan has argued that the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group, finalized on Monday, amounts to an effort to erase accountability for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Azerbaijan’s actions against Armenians.

The group, long tasked with mediating the conflict, was effectively dissolved following a joint request by Armenia and Azerbaijan, with no objections voiced by any member state or co-chair country.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Badalyan said this consensus contradicts claims in Armenia that Russia supported the group’s dissolution while the United States and France opposed it.

“This shows how primitive propaganda was in Armenia,” he wrote. “I have repeatedly said that none of the three co-chair countries objected to the group becoming ‘history’ because they all wanted to shed the responsibility associated with it.”

Badalyan stressd that Azerbaijan had been pushing to eliminate the Minsk Group since the 2020 war, precisely because the group’s existence implied unresolved questions of responsibility. “The OSCE Minsk Group is the ‘trace’ of Azerbaijan’s crimes against Artsakh and Armenia,” he wrote. “Baku did everything possible to erase that trace and the co-chair countries did not stand in the way.”

Badalyan added that major powers had no interest in reopening debates about their own role in the failed peace process. “No superpower wants unnecessary questions,” he noted.

He also criticized the Armenian leadership for failing to institutionalize discussions about accountability and instead using the group’s dissolution to secure short-term political gains. According to him, Yerevan sought to “extract the maximum” from the process, pointing to the Washington declaration signed on August 8.