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This is CBS Eye in the World. I'm John Batcher talking about the South Caucasus, especially the troubled part, which has to do with pieces of the former Soviet state that were divided at the end of the Soviet Union between Azerbaijan, a republic of the Soviet state, and Armenia, a republic of the Soviet state.

And in between was a piece of land called Nagorno-Karabakh, mountainous with lots of farms, and another piece of land that was always Armenian.

And their contiguous barely, with something called a Lachen corridor, the Armenian part is called the Zangazor corridor.

And then there's an exclave. That means it's a part of your territory that isn't contiguous with your border. It's on the other side of somebody else's border called Nakhchabad.

So if you had to come up with a game to keep people at odds with each other, you draw a map like this where nobody's at peace.

Did I mention that Iran is to the south, Turkey is to the west, Armenians, and Russia are to the north. We're looking at trouble, but Ekaterina Zalotov is here to help me say that there looks to be a prosperity hook here to attract Yervan, Azerbaijan, Ankara, and Moscow.

A hook that could unite all of them in one wish, which is to build that railroad and start trade.

Is that something that Russia has the attention of Moscow right now, Moscow being the driving force in this region with its peacekeepers and with its long relationship?

And also Ekaterina, we have to remind everybody almost everybody over 40 speaks Russian fluently in these states. They were educated at Moscow University and your most distinguished colleges.

So Russia has persuasion power. Does the U.S. have any presence here to your understanding?

Well, of course they have the presence there, for example, we can talk about the soft powers universities plus Azerbaijan is one of the major partner of the United States in the South Caucasus.

But to tell the truth, if we talk about geopolitical angle, the United States doesn't have much interest in these areas, the lands or resources and so on.

So being present in that region, it's mostly could be seen as an attempt to irritate Russia, to remind Russia about some consequences of the actions, for example, or remind Russia what could be potentially done.

And so on. So in fact, the United States is there, it's observing.

It's participating in different events, mostly small, for example, if we take into consideration the current drills that are happening between the United States.

In fact, there are not so many troops participating. I mean, they can't start any military operation or, for example, to prevent any military operation.

So it's mostly like symbolic, but this means a lot to Moscow.

And the build up of troops somewhere near Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan, is there a comparable build up of forces by Armenia, anything like that?

Well, for sure, we know that Azerbaijan is built in up forces. There are a lot of videos that are posted in social networks and especially Telegram.

We see that tanks, for example, are moving there and I saw personally a quite impressive picture of many tanks moving to the border.

We know that the Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijan is constructing fortifications from two sides in the Zankezor corridor.

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