Political scientist: "If you want peace, prepare for war" 

ArmInfo. The talks of the Armenian authorities about peace with Azerbaijan, if they are not accompanied by concrete steps towards the strengthening of Armenia,  are a false category. Political scientist Robert Ghevondyan expressed  a similar opinion to ArmInfo.

"We certainly need to talk about peace. But we need to prepare for  war. We spoke and prepared for peace back in 2019-20. As a result,  the enemy prepared for war and won it. In this light, Prime Minister  Pashinyan, of course, has to talk about peace, simultaneously acting  towards the formation of real mechanisms for ensuring it, intensively  arming the army, creating new opportunities for ensuring security,  etc. As far as I understand, all this is not being done, while  without it, only talks about the peace has no basis, respectively,  prospects," he said.

According to Ghevondyan, all this is especially urgent, against the  backdrop of the Aliyev regime initiating more and more provocations  in Artsakh. In his opinion, the situation around the village of  Parukh is another, not the first and the last, provocation of  Azerbaijan as part of its policy of creeping aggression.  Especially  against the background of the fact  that Aliyev does not hide his own  goals in the direction of de- Armenization and the final capture of  Artsakh.

In this light, not seeing flaws in the performance of their own  duties by Russian peacekeepers, the political scientist determines  the current situation in Artsakh by the effective use by Azerbaijan  of the opportunities that have opened up as a result of Ukraine and  all related processes. In this light, Ghevondyan recalled that  another Azerbaijani provocation followed the fact that a month ago  the Armenian delegation abstained vote on Ukraine in the UN. The  latter, in his opinion, means that Baku actively uses every  opportunity, while the Armenian side, as a rule, does not.

"There is only one way out - Armenia must actively arm itself,  strengthen its own security. Only this will force Azerbaijan to  fulfill its own obligations. Moreover, it will allow us to sometimes  go beyond our own obligations when necessary, forcing Baku to act  already in our status. A show of force is the only way out to which  we resort, as happened the other day in Khramort. But we resort  extremely rarely. As for Artsakh specifically, Yerevan has no actual  leverage on the situation there. However, Armenia remains one of the  beneficiaries of the security of Artsakh residents by Russian  peacekeepers. In this light, it may moreover must turn to Moscow  demanding the fulfillment of its obligations. Otherwise, for example,  it can be proposed to replace the Russian contingent in Artsakh with  an international one. "It is clear that in the current geopolitical  realities it will be quite difficult to do that, but it does not  eliminate the need for action at all," the political scientist  concluded.