ArmInfo. The Russian mandate will open the door to the territorial losses of Artsakh. Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Artsakh Republic, independent analyst Arman Melikyan expressed this opinion to ArmInfo.
"In my opinion, the option of freezing the Karabakh conflict offered by Samvel Babayan by giving Russia a mandate cannot be implemented in practice. Such a mandate for a territory has always been given to a country as a result of certain political and legal approvals. It is noteworthy that this practice was suspended with the founding of the UN, "he stressed.
On March 15, former commander of the Artsakh Defense Army, Samvel Babayan, proposed to abandon the Madrid principles, voicing the idea of granting a territorial mandate of Russia as a mechanism for resolving the Karabakh conflict.
According to Melikyan, in the case of the hypothetical implementation of Babayan's proposal these days, this will lead to the loss of Artsakh territories. In the existing legal and political realities, Moscow, according to his estimates, can receive a similar mandate exclusively in relation to the territory of the former NKAO, and not the current Artsakh Republic. Moreover, only with the permission of the official Baku.
According to the analyst's estimates, in the existing geopolitical realities, the two Armenian republics are forced to compare their own military potential with the existing political and diplomatic capabilities in order to achieve peace acceptable to Yerevan and Stepanakert. "Today, the possibility of ensuring all of our, including territorial, interests still remain. For this, it is necessary to conduct specific professional work in a specific direction," the analyst concluded.