Grigory Karasin, head of the Federation Council committee on international affairs, said that Western countries are actually freezing negotiations within the framework of international Geneva discussions on security and stability in the Transcaucasus. He wrote about this in his Telegram channel.

The co-chairs of the Geneva discussions from the EU, the UN, the OSCE did not inform the South Ossetian side that the next round of discussions, which was scheduled for February, was postponed. In turn, South Ossetia canceled a meeting with the co-chairs of the Geneva discussions on security and stability in Transcaucasia in Tskhinval, which was scheduled for February 7.

In this regard, the senator believes that "a new cloud" is coming over the South Caucasus.

“Westerners, in the heat of confrontation with Russia, are actually freezing a useful format of negotiations within the framework of the “Geneva discussions on security in the South Caucasus” (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Georgia, Russia, the United States with the participation of the OSCE, the UN and the European Union) ... Well, now suffer and worry the peoples of our common region with the South Caucasus will have to do,” the parliamentarian wrote on Telegram.

According to him, Russia needs to take this into account and prepare.

Karasin also called the Geneva discussions "a reliable safety net against exacerbations" in the South Caucasus region. He stressed that the Russian Federation has always responsibly taken part in the work of this format of negotiations, as well as in the incident response mechanisms created as part of these discussions.

“Probably, relative predictability no longer fits into Washington’s plans,” the politician added.

Earlier, NATO stated that the South Caucasus is a strategic region for the alliance.

Subsequently, Denis Gonchar, director of the fourth department of the CIS countries of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that the European Union and NATO want to squeeze Russia out of the Transcaucasus. According to the diplomat, Western countries are persistently trying to interfere in the negotiations of the Russian Federation with Armenia and Azerbaijan