In an extensive BBC analysis of the post-Crimean security landscape by Patrick Jackson on 9 September, RCS Director Richard Giragosian was cited and his analysis of the Karabakh security situation was published. In the BBC story, Giragosian noted that “situated to Russia's strategically vulnerable southern flank, the conflict over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh has emerged as perhaps the next flashpoint.”
.Giragosian stressed that “Russia has long played both sides in this conflict, which defines a deep division between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as the leading arms provider to all parties and through its diplomatic ‘mediation’ that has seemingly done little more than maintain the status quo of an unresolved conflict.”
The RSC Director added that “as the Karabakh conflict is moving from a "frozen" to a very "hot" conflict, Russia now seems poised to don its cloak of mediator as President Putin convened the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in August for a stern lecture after renewed clashes. The next stage of this new "Putin paradigm" is perhaps an even more risky move to be the conflict's sole arbitrator,” he warned.