ArmeniaNow  --  On Russian president Dmitry Medvedev's invitation his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan will leave for a working visit in Sochi on January 23, where another Russia-mediated trilateral meeting of Azeri and Armenian leaders is to be held to discuss the Karabakh settlement issue.

What does this meeting promise? The last meeting in June in Kazan turned out to be a failure because of Azeri leader Ilham Aliyev's standpoint: he offered ten new amendments to the reconciled document on basic principles of settlement.

This led the negotiations to a deadlock, mediators implicitly criticized Baku's position, and official Yerevan stated that a breakthrough in the settlement process would be possible only if Baku withdrew the suggested amendments. The process has been frozen ever since.

As for OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, during their recent regional visits, rather than looking for ways of settling the conflict, the mediators focused more on search of new measures to strengthen the ceasefire regime on the line of contact of Azerbaijan's and Nagorno Karabakh's armed forces, although unfortunately even on this front no essential progress can be observed.

No progress should be expected from the Sochi meeting either; also because presidential elections will be held this year in all three of OSCE MG co-chairing countries – the USA, France and Russia.

Considering the fact that the election in Russia is to be held as early as in March, one can assume that the Sochi meeting will become the last with Medvedev’s mediation. It will become а symbolic - 10th - meeting held in this format since 2008.

Medvedev is still optimistic and in a recent interview to an Azeri TV channel expressed certainty that there exists a possibility of settling the conflict in the nearest future.

“It might be the conflict on the post-Soviet area that can currently be settled. It all depends on the good will of the sides, their ability and willingness to hear each other’s arguments,” said Medvedev.

The Russian leader’s desire to complete his presidential mediatory mission on peaceful settlement of the Karabakh issue on a note different from the gloomy Kazan meeting is understandable. However, there is no ground, no preconditions to objectively believe a breakthrough is possible in Sochi.