The unusually warm climate in Yerevan this winter has been matched by an atmosphere of political heat generated by significant visits among heads of states, by fiery declarations, and by the ongoing debate over Armenia-Turkey protocols.

Robert Bradke, US co-chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group (OSCE MG) has visited the region and met the President of Nagorno Karabakh in Stepanakert. NKR president Bako Sahakyan himself has managed to visit Moscow as a “private individual”.

At the same time when the NKR leader was in Moscow, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Yerevan. Prior to taking the flight to the Armenian capital, Lavrov had met his Turkish counterpart Ahmed Davutoglu.

Davutoglu himself was in Moscow as a part of the Turkish governmental delegation lead by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, in his turn, met Russia’s leadership.

A few days earlier Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan returned from the Russian capital. The OSCE Minsk Group has scheduled a visit to the region for January 20-21.

On January 18 the Armenian President left for Moscow to meet his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev. During the visit “the presidents discussed the perspectives of the development of bilateral relation and the Karabakh issue settlement ”.

While the Karabakh issue was being discussed in Moscow, Azerbaijan’s leader Ilham Aliyev made a statement in Baku, sending a message of the kind to his colleagues: “The path of the Karabakh issue settlement has already been defined: the principle of territorial integrity has been chosen as the priority in this issue, and that’s the key formula”.

Aliyev also pointed out that “in the future the Armenian community of Nagorno Karabakh will have to live as having the high status of autonomy as part of the Azerbaijani state”.

However, hasty conclusions should not be drawn, especially that not only the Minsk Group co-chairs visit is planned for the coming days but the Armenian and Azeri Presidents meeting as well.

Climate change has surely been the political story as this unusual January continues ...