JAMnews. For the third day in a row Yerevan and Baku are exchanging statements about the Lachin corridor, that is, the road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. The topic was raised by the head of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, who said that Armenia uses it “to send weapons to Karabakh.” The Ambassador-at-Large of Armenia, Edmon Marukyan, believes that Azerbaijan is trying to create “false grounds for challenging the issue of the Lachin corridor.”
Military expert Karen Hovhannisyan believes that Azerbaijan is trying to solve several problems at once, including achieving the desired “Zangezur corridor”, a road that would connect the country with its exclave of Nakhichevan through the Armenian city of Meghri. The Armenian authorities say they are ready to provide roads, but not a “corridor”, which means a loss of sovereignty over territory.
According to military expert Karen Hovhannisyan, Baku’s statements about the Lachin corridor are nothing but blackmail.
“Using this lever, Azerbaijan is trying to put pressure on the Armenian government, to blackmail it. ‘If you do not fulfill my demands, I can liquidate the Lachin corridor under this pretext’,” he told JAMnews.
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Hovhannisyan believes that by putting pressure on Armenia, Baku is pursuing a number of goals, including obtaining the so-called “Zangezur corridor”, and thus solves several problems at once:
“to show that the Russian peacekeeping forces are not in control of the situation, these are not the forces that can control the Lachin corridor, and thus blackmail not only Armenia, but also Russia,
create a path to Nakhichevan through the territory of Armenia and with a certain status,
introduce certain restrictions on the passage of vehicles along the Lachin corridor.”
According to Hovhannisyan, Aliyev is simultaneously trying to justify the fact that a peace agreement with Armenia will not be signed before the end of the year, referring to “still unresolved issues.”
Returning to the issue of possible developments around the Lachin corridor, Hovhannisyan suggested that Azerbaijan could ban the movement of trucks.
“They may say in Baku that they do not consider it expedient, because trucks can transport, for example, weapons and ammunition. It is clear that if the movement of trucks is banned, communication with Artsakh will be cut off,” he said.
Hovhannisyan believes that in the current situation, Armenia has only one thing left to do: to present the real situation to the international community, “to openly declare the true goals of Azerbaijan.”