“Now there are three Armenian-Azerbaijani agendas, it seems: unblocking of communications, border demarcation, and peace treaty. There is some progress in unblocking communications, although there are many dark spots here, but at least the railway route is officially announced and the road is being discussed. The demarcation and border delimitation has also moved forward: a bilateral commission has been formed, the meeting with full members of which has not been held yet. It is supposed to take place in August.
And there is the issue of the peace treaty, where the situation is quite clear: if an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty is to be signed, it will be mainly on Azerbaijani terms. Either it will be fixed that the NKR, as a unit, does not exist at all, or, in the best case, some kind of cultural autonomy will be fixed for the NKR. Otherwise, a peace agreement will not be signed in the coming years,” political scientist Benjamin Poghosyan expressed his opinion at the discussion titled “Global Developments: What potential does Armenia have to respond to the challenges?” held at the Media Center, referring to the meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers held in Tbilisi on July 16, and the Pashinyan-Aliyev meeting scheduled for August.
Read also
The political scientist is sure that implementing some amorphous status of NKR will very quickly lead to the depopulation of Artsakh. Against this background, the rebuke of the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan and its agenda, which will be held in August, the political scientist considers the question of whether the mentioned three directions are connected with each other or whether it is possible to achieve progress with each of them. Speaking about the Azerbaijani military blackmail and the mood of the Armenian side to give up Artsakh in order to save Syunik, the political scientist said that it is a road leading nowhere, because in that case we will have to give up something in order to save something else.
According to Benjamin Poghosyan, the best chance for now is that this uncertain situation will continue after 2025 and Russian troops will remain in Artsakh until a solution is found.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
