Seyran Ohanyan, a former defense minister leading the parliamentary group of Armenia’s main opposition group, on Thursday urged the Armenian military to disobey Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s orders to withdraw from disputed border areas demanded by Azerbaijan.
Ohanyan said that Pashinyan’s plans to unilaterally cede them to Baku are illegal given the absence of any mutually agreed mechanism for the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Pashinian defended his plans on Monday when he visited two of the villages in Armenia’s northern Tavush province adjacent to four deserted settlements occupied by the Armenian army in 1991-1992. He told local residents that Azerbaijan will attack Armenia unless it regains control of them. He also admitted that Baku does not intend to give back any Armenian territory in the Tavush area captured by Azerbaijani forces in the early 1990s.
“What is this if not treacherous behavior towards the people of Armenia?” Ohanyan told a news conference. “There will probably be grounds for starting legal proceedings here if he does initiate these steps.”
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“I think that people involved in this process must be held accountable,” he said. “Secondly, I think that in the border areas, in Armenia [as a whole] and in the army itself there are intelligent people who can reject this illegal process.”
“It is every person’s right to reject that criminal process. That can include military personnel. The army is a disciplined structure that defends our country. What I’m saying is not to give up that defense but to reject illegal orders,” added the retired general who served as defense minister from 2008-2016.
Ohanyan’s Hayastan alliance and the other opposition bloc represented in the Armenian parliament, Pativ Unem, say the territorial concessions would not only have serious consequences for the security of the affected Tavush communities but also the country as a whole. Ohanyan reiterated that the handover of the border areas would breach the integrity of the Armenian army’s border defense fortifications in Tavush reinforced over the last three decades.
The ruined villages claimed by Baku are strategically located along one of the two main Armenian highways leading to Georgia as well as the pipeline supplying Russian natural gas to Armenia. Pashinian said on March 12 that the local sections of that infrastructure must be rerouted “so that they pass through Armenia’s de jure territory.”