“Azerbaijan is preparing for war, but Armenia is not,” the head of the Voskanapat center and analyst Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan said during the ‘Negotiations Process and the Environment for Armenian Foreign Policy’ panel organized at the Voskanapat center. According to him, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s perspective is entirely focused on internal affairs. He does not have any mechanisms for evaluating external risk. Nor are there any people who would help and, in general, Armenia does not have such an agenda. “The motivation and will to withstand these risks does not exist, nor does the realization that we need to prepare for such risks. We are on the brink of war. The public needs to be aware of that and prepare for it.”
According to Melik-Shahnazaryan, there is still a large section of Armenian society that blindly believes everything Nikol Pashinyan says, and they believe that Armenia is a democratic country, Azerbaijan will never attempt to attack Artsakh, and the Artsakh conflict will be resolved in the way that Nikol Pashinyan demands or expects. Meanwhile, in his opinion, Azerbaijan’s activities over the past year and a half show that it is preparing for war, and it has been able to completely eradicate the Vienna and St. Petersburg agreements by exchanging those for “short agreements made in the elevator.” “The conflict mediators and Azerbaijan are speaking one language, but the authorities of Armenia have remained outside of that cooperation. In essence, our state’s position goes against that of the international community. Azerbaijan did not need to make a huge effort in order to reach that. Azerbaijan took advantage of the fact that the new authorities of Armenia did not know anything about the logic behind the negotiations process and existing dangers.”
Nelly Grigoryan
