Official Baku reacted to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s statement that his 18-year-old son will serve in the army in accordance with the established procedure. Ashot Pashinyan, in his turn, noted that he applied for serving in the Republic of Artsakh. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry has qualified these statements as “a regular populist attempt and violation of international norms”.
“Armenian citizens, in particular, young people, have to spend the most important stage of their life in trenches in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan instead of engaging in educational and creative activities”, said Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hikmet Hajiyev. He advised the Armenian leadership to “think of the country’s socio-economic issues, the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict”.
It should also be noted that Azerbaijan also touched upon the debate that took place between the former Minister of Defense of Armenia Vigen Sargsyan and Secretary of the Security Council Armen Grigoryan on the “Nation-army” concept. In particular, analyst of the Azerbaijani website haqqin.az expressed an opinion that the escalation of the Karabakh conflict is not far off. “If Security Council Secretary of Armenia is in direct debate with former Defense Minister, we should not expect stability”, the website wrote.