Last week, Alik Media reported that Pashinyan, Putin, and Aliyev will sign two documents in Moscow on November 10 this year. Citing “reliable diplomatic sources,” the website notes that the first document refers to the demarcation and delimitation of the Armenia-Azerbaijan state border, by which Yerevan and Baku will recognize each other’s borders and territorial integrity based on maps of the Soviet Army General Staff in the 1920s. The second document, according to Alik Media, deals with the unblocking of communications in the region, in particular with the details of establishing road corridors, including between Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan.
Some Russian websites (including RIA Novosti) confirmed the possibility of such a meeting. After three or four days of silence, the Armenian and Russian official sources referred to that issue. What they mean is that a summit can indeed take place, but there is no concrete agreement yet. Many in Armenia put forward the theory that the information leak was organized by the Armenian government itself. If this theory is correct, then there can be two explanations. Either the administration is preparing public opinion or Pashinyan does not really want to sign such a document and wants to present “public discontent” as an excuse.
It is difficult to say whether it is true or not, but it is clear that documents of this content are on the table, and in that sense the following questions are meaningful: 1) Can Pashinyan avoid signing those documents? 2) Is it possible to separate the issue of demarcation and delimitation from the issue of territorial integrity? 3) Is it possible to have a “symmetrical” approach to the issue of unblocking: we are giving them a route, so they will give us one? If the answer to these three questions (as I suppose) is no, then that document should be signed by Pashinyan himself, because his policy has led to such a result.
As for the “internal pressure,” I think Pashinyan’s hands are free in this issue. More than 680,000 citizens who voted for the Civil Contract on June 20 gave the mandate to the Prime Minister. Many of those 680,000, some in private conversations and some in public on Facebook, say that the people still left in Artsakh are not Armenians (I do not want to quote harsher words). And the Civil Contract deputies say that the statement that “there is no Armenia without Artsakh” is wrong. So “from that side” I do not see any problem.
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Aram Abrahamyan
