Page 72 - bne monthly magazine June 2024 Russian Despair Index

72 Opinion
imported oil on average and 7% less than Saudi Arabian oil
in January-March.
In recent months, trade between the countries has also been hampered by Western sanctions against Russia. Late last year, the United States made it possible to impose secondary sanctions on foreign financial companies if they help Russia evade sanctions. According to press reports, China's three major state-owned banks (BOC, CCB and ICBC) have refused to accept payments from sanctioned Russian companies, and Chinese banks have been more reluctant than before
to pass on payments that could have any connection to sanctioned companies. Banks have started to demand extensive explanations from the seller and the buyer about which shipments the payments are related to. According to newspaper reports, this has caused long delays in payment traffic between the countries. Some Russian companies have started to relay payments through third countries, which increases costs. This year, Chinese companies have
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bne June 2024
been urged to switch to using the yuan in Russian trade.
Last year, a good quarter of international trade was in yuan. According to press reports, this spring many Chinese banks (including ICBC) have also stopped accepting yuan payments from Russian companies and some have stopped their operations in Russia completely. Smaller banks with no other international operations are increasing their market share.
As a result of Russia's war of aggression and sanctions imposed by Western countries, Russia's dependence on China has increased. China (including Hong Kong) already accounts
for about 40% of Russia's goods imports. Russia has also increased its importance as China's trading partner, and the country's share is 5% of China's goods imports and 3% of its exports. However, travel between the countries has decreased significantly since the time before the pandemic. According
to Rosstat's statistics, last year Chinese tourists visited Russia only a quarter of the number in 2019. Similarly, the number of Russian tourist trips to China fell to less than a third from 2019.
Aliyev continues to block the chance of peace
in the South Caucasus
Robert Ananyan in Yerevan
Will Armenia and Azerbaijan sign a peace treaty, finally agreeing on the difficult issue of border demarcation?
Yerevan and Baku have taken a first step by accepting the Alma-Ata Declaration as a guiding document in the process of border demarcation, fixing the borders at the time of
the collapse of the USSR and affirming the independence
of the two states. The former administrative borders of the USSR are recognised as state borders. The administrative borders of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Soviet Republics should be restored through demarcation. Maps from 1969, 1974, and 1975 will be used, which have a legal basis as they were approved and signed by the Armenian and Azerbaijani Supreme Councils.
In line with this declaration, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to return to Azerbaijan the ruins of four villages, which came under the control of the Armenian armed forces in the fighting in the 1990s.
However, Armenia won't get a single centimetre from the 200 to 300 sq km of territory that Azerbaijan has occupied in recent years. This fact has caused discontent in the villages bordering Azerbaijan, where anti-government protests are currently being held.
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This unpopular decision of Pashinyan exposes his government to serious risk, but it gives observers reason to believe that Armenia and Azerbaijan will finally sign a peace treaty. How realistic are these hopes?
"Resolution" of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
The central issue in Armenian-Azerbaijani relations had long been the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh. The 30-year-long peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia eventually failed because of Azerbaijan's aggressive wars in 2020 and 2023 to recover the territory, which has for centuries been occupied by ethnic Armenians.
In December, 120,000 ethnic Armenians, who had relied on the "security guarantees" of Russian "peacekeepers", were forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh and sought refuge in Armenia. Today, Azerbaijan considers the conflict resolved, as Karabakh is completely under its control. Armenians
have not returned to Nagorno-Karabakh because of a lack
of trust in the Russian guarantees. Recently, the Russian troops agreed to leave Karabakh, concluding one of the most disgraced peacekeeping missions in the world.
However, the G7 countries do not regard the Karabakh issue as closed, as they recently called on the Azerbaijani authorities to "take appropriate steps to ensure the safe, dignified, and stable