defeated". Several analysts noted that the clashes did not result in significant changes. Matthew Bodner wrote in The Moscow Times on 6 April that "the previous status quo has been more-or-less preserved." Independent Armenian journalist Tatul Hakobyan, who visited the fighting scene during the clashes, remarked that the death of scores of soldiers of both sides was "senseless" as no real change occurred. He stated: "Azerbaijan did not win and Armenia did not lose." Russian military expert Vladimir Yevseyev said that the Azerbaijani offensive, despite the initial victory, was not a success because the Azerbaijani side has numerous killed soldiers and destroyed tanks. The International Crisis Group assessment stated that Azerbaijan gained "small but strategically important pieces of land". Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer believes that Azerbaijan "won the first round of fighting". Former Minister of Defence of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Samvel Babayan stated that the territories gained by Azerbaijan have strategic importance, and that Armenia lost these territories within one hour. The governments of Armenia and of Nagorno-Karabakh rejected his criticism. Chatham House fellow Zaur Shiriyev, suggested that Azerbaijan prompted a "carefully controlled escalation [that] served to raise international awareness of the fragility of a status quo which Azerbaijan regards as unfavourable, in order to galvanize the international mediators and put pressure on Yerevan to be constructive at the negotiating table." British journalist Thomas de Waal, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, does not believe that the Azerbaijani offensive was meant as a full-scale military operation but rather as a limited attempt to bring the conflict back on the international agenda and put Armenia under pressure. He believes that after the April violence, the conflict is unlikely to return to its semi-quiet state and that a new round of fighting would be harder to contain than previous conflicts. Christine Philippe-Blumauer noted, "Russian official reactions suggest that Russian troops would not actually decide to intervene in favor of the Armenian side, should the conflict scale-up to a fully-fledged war yet again." The OSCE Minsk Group organized a meeting only after several days the conflict sparked, and the parties declared the ceasefire even before the meeting took place. Following the conflict, Russia started to increase political and economic ties with both Azerbaijan and Armenia. In Yerevan, Gazprom agreed to increase gas supply to Armenia, and