Reporters asked a representative of the I Have Honor alliance, Khachik Galstyan, about how the party’s prime minister candidate and former NSS director, Artur Vanetsyan, had previously said that he can solve the issue of returning the POWs, and has he taken any step in that direction?
Khachik Galstyan initially noted, “Artur Vanetsyan said that if he were an authority, he could have solved the issue of POWs. That is not an issue of personal diplomacy, but interstate relations. The authorities today have a terrible toolkit for manipulation. I trust that even if Artur Vanetsyan returned several POWs through his personal connections, the authorities’ propaganda machine would have said that Vanetsyan made an agreement with Aliyev; he made Aliyev hold onto them and bring them back now so that he could hurt the authorities’ ratings.”
Regarding Nikol Pashinyan’s willingness to exchange his son for the POWs, Galstyan emphasized that this is a propaganda trick, and besides that, he could have made a similar offer earlier. Khachik Galstyan is convinced that as long as Nikol Pashinyan is in the seat of power, the POWs will not return. Moreover, Azerbaijan will demand more territorial concessions from the Armenian side.
Read also
Luiza Sukiasyan
