By Azatutyun.am
Armenia is under strong pressure to join the “union state” of Russia and Belarus and open an “exterritorial corridor” to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave, a senior Armenian official said on Tuesday, commenting on the continuing Azerbaijani blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“The broader context, so to speak, of support for Azerbaijan is in the context of securing a road passing through Armenia’s territory under the so-called corridor logic,” Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, told Armenian Public Television late on Monday. “Armenia is continuing to resist this.”
“With regard to the union state, the pressures on Armenia come from there as well,” he said. “When Armenia’s democratic system resists this, it comes under different types of pressure in the form of military force.”
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Grigorian did not explicitly describe Russia as the source of that pressure. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced his comments as “provocative.”
Speaking to News.am, Peskov insisted that Russian officials have never told Yerevan to open the land corridor for Azerbaijan or join the Russian-Belarusian “union state.”
Some lawmakers representing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract pointed the finger at Russia shortly after Azerbaijan blocked on December 12 the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia. They said Moscow ordered Russian peacekeepers not to prevent or end the road blockade in an effort to clinch geopolitical concessions from Yerevan.
“The Lachin corridor would be reopened now if Russia wanted that,” one of those lawmakers, Gagik Melkonian, told RFE/RL’s Armenia Service on Tuesday. “Russia wants us to be its vassal.”
By contrast, opposition parliamentarians brushed aside the claims made by Grigorian. Tigran Abrahamian, a senior member of the opposition Pativ Unem bloc, said Pashinian’s administration is whipping up anti-Russian sentiment to try to dodge responsibility for its inability to deal with grave security challenges facing Armenia. Abrahamian said Moscow has no vested interest in the opening of the corridor sought by Baku.
In late September, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk effectively backed the Armenian government’s position on a planned road and a railway that would connect Nakhichevan to the rest of Azerbaijan through Armenia. Overchuk stressed that a Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani task force has never discussed any “extraterritorial corridors.”
An Armenian newspaper controlled by Pashinian claimed in early October that the Russians are trying to annex Armenia or make it part of their “union state” with Belarus. The Kremlin dismissed the claim as “obvious nonsense.”
Both Abrahamian and Agnesa Khamoyan, a parliament deputy representing the opposition Hayastan alliance, challenged Grigorian to publicly clarify whether Moscow is pressing Armenia to join the Russia-Belarus union.
