After the statement of the Security Council of Artsakh, RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced at the government session. “A political conversation should begin between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, and our partners in Nagorno-Karabakh should not allow anyone to accuse them of disrupting a constructive conversation or making such a conversation impossible.” Meanwhile, the president of Azerbaijan has several times rejected the prospect of such a conversation with Artsakh.
Guest of “Aravot” “Areresum” (“Confrontation”) program, Ph.D. in International Relations of Stanford University, USA Artur Khachikyan said in this regard: “Aliyev said how these negotiations would be: either you have to leave here or submit to me. And those people who fought against the Azerbaijanis in the defense army will be considered terrorists and probably imprisoned and tortured.”
According to Arsen Gasparyan, another program guest, doctor of political sciences, and former chief adviser to the Prime Minister, “Azerbaijan will not negotiate with the leadership of the Republic of Artsakh. Any political conversation is ruled out. Aliyev said about it, and many politicians of Azerbaijan and their government representatives also said. Maybe they can negotiate and talk if there are any technical issues.”
Artur Khachikyan presented the chain of defeats. “The peace agenda failed. We were promised that after solving the Artsakh issue, we would be able to live peacefully with Azerbaijan. Still, the latter’s leader says that the first step will be Artsakh, the second – be Zangezur, and the third – be the rest of Armenia. We are Western Azerbaijan in general. In other words, the enemy is talking to us from a position of strength, and this group, which promised us that they would bring peace by making concessions and courting Azerbaijan, failed again. We were promised that the democratic West would help us and we should leave Russia. And you see, our relations with Russia are at the lowest point. Beyond this, I can’t imagine what else should happen for Moscow to insult us openly. They promised the West would help us and told us American and French fairy tales. Yesterday, that bubble burst once again. The representative of France avowedly said that they do not recognize Artsakh. In other words, the beautiful resolutions they accepted, Macron’s Armenian tweets, were a bluff.”
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Russian politicians and experts have also noticed that in recent months Armenia has been making efforts to change allies of Armenia: From Russia to the West, Pashinyan’s goal is to change Armenia’s foreign political vector completely, that is, to get out of Russia’s sphere of influence. “First, you need to have a foreign policy, then think about changing it,” Arsen Gasparyan responded. “Unfortunately, today’s government of Armenia has no foreign policy, and the department dealing with foreign policy is a failed institution. Armenia’s foreign policy has no content. It’s funny to talk about allies, partners here.”
The “Civil Contract” explains this differently. CC MP Gurgen Arsenyan emphasized. “We have stopped being dumb henchmen of our partners and allies. It’s time for our partners and allies to imagine what it means to be an ally.”
Artur Khachikyan called such claims “ridiculous and absurd.” “They said they would increase our sovereignty, but due to their policy, we now have no sovereignty. Our issues are decided in Ankara, Moscow, and other places.”
For the first time in the history of newly independent Armenia, Russia’s military presence at the highest level was described as a threat to the security of Armenia. Nikol Pashinyan announced at the press conference. “Azerbaijan explains its aggressive actions in the course of communication with Western countries in the following way: we fear that RA and Russia are preparing joint aggressive actions against Azerbaijan, and here we are taking preventive steps. We draw the attention of our Russian partners to this fact: noting that, in fact, in the conditions of their non-reaction, it turns out that the military presence of the Russian Federation in Armenia not only does not guarantee the security of the Republic of Armenia but also creates threats to the security of the Republic of Armenia.”
“I have never heard anything like that either. And the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, responded to that – said Arsen Gasparyan. – You know, if the statement of the head of a state is answered by the foreign ministry spokesperson of the other state, especially when it comes to security, and especially about a country that has a military base and border guards in on your territory, on the borders of Turkey and Iran. In addition, almost all Armenian families use Russian gas, and the answer is at the Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s level; this proves the level of bilateral relations. But one thing should be taken into account, and this is very important, that Armenia and Artsakh are separated from this government in Russia.”
And Artur Khachikyan added: “They are threatening us, saying that “we will go all the way to Yerevan, and Armenia is western Azerbaijan.” And our leadership says that the threat comes not from Azerbaijan but from Russia. It is not rational. It’s a sign of psychological problems.”
The entire conversation is in the video
Anna ISRAYELYAN
