Expert: Pashinyan`s personal decision to "recognize Karabakh as part  of Azerbaijan" gave Baku grounds to start ethnic cleansing of Artsakh

ArmInfo. After Baku, Ankara and Yerevan jointly complete the "withdrawal of Russia from the region",  as recently announced by RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Baku and Ankara will absorb Armenia. Political observer of Politeconomy Research Institute, political scientist Benamin Matevosyan, shares a similar opinion.

The expert was interested in what Pashinyan is preparing the Armenian  people for. He drew attention to the fact that Nikol Pashinyan,  during his press conference on July 25, quoted the wording from the  reports of the US State Department on the Karabakh issue and the  statements of the French co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group to local  parliamentarians, as well as the statement of Russian President  Vladimir Putin on December 17, 2020, about "Karabakh belongs to  Azerbaijan", thereby trying to solve 2 problems at the same time: in  particular, to state that even before the Prague meeting in October  2022, and even before the 2020 war, "the whole world recognized  Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan"; and to lay responsibility for the  blockade of the Kashatagh (Lachin) corridor on Russia, which "back in  2020 and before that" recognized Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, but  under these conditions agreed to send peacekeepers to Artsakh, but  "for some unknown reason today refuses to fulfill its obligations and  open the corridor."

At the same time, Matevosyan announced that Pashinyan is acting very  delicately, saying "half- truths".

"As for the statements of the President of the Russian Federation,  and the statements of Western officials and organizations, and in  order to understand this, it is enough to read the fuller statement  of the Russian leader of December 17, 2020.

"Russia's position is as follows: Azerbaijan should return the seven  holding areas around Nagorno-Karabakh, while the status of Karabakh  should remain unchanged - "the status quo should be fixed." Vladimir  Putin noted that from the international legal point of view, Karabakh  is part of Azerbaijan, but in reality the situation is more  complicated. "Here each side has its own truth," the president said.  "We need to deal with this calmly," Putin said.

Matevosyan recalled that it was precisely in order to "calmly sort  out" the problem and the status of Karabakh that Russian peacekeepers  entered the region, and the document dated November 9, 2020 did not  say a word about the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, which gave a huge  "window of opportunity for the Armenian side."

"Moreover, last week even Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev spoke  out in support of this interpretation of the processes, saying the  following: "None of the international actors who now say that  "Karabakh is Azerbaijan" has never said this before, never. When it  came to Azerbaijan, they said that we should accept the right to  self-determination along with territorial integrity. Now the  situation is different...

The status of Artsakh has changed not because of the 2020 war, but  because of the personal decision of Nikol Pashinyan to recognize  Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan in the autumn of 2022 in Prague. This  is what gave Azerbaijan a political justification for the blockade of  the corridor and the start of the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh," added  the political scientist.

Matevosyan stated that the statement of October 6, 2022 put an end to  discussions on the status of Karabakh (there is nothing more to  "quietly deal with"), which also changed the status of the Russian  peacekeepers, making their military presence not on the "disputed  territory without status", but on the territories recognized by both  sides of the conflict as the territory of Azerbaijan.

"However, the press conference was not held for this idea, it was  held in order for Pashinyan to read his opening speech, the essence  of which is that "Armenia is looking for security guarantees for  itself in the region." Which is a statement of several simple truths:  the West, as an extra- regional entity, is not ready to give any  military guarantees for the security and territorial integrity of  Armenia; this security guarantee should be Armenia's integration into  a "regional temporary military-political union with Turkey and  Azerbaijan."

You ask why "temporary"? For the reason that after Baku, Ankara and  Yerevan jointly complete the "withdrawal of Russia from the region",  as recently announced by Pashinyan, Baku and Ankara will absorb  Armenia.

Nikol Pashinyan knows that this is exactly what is happening,  everything else is noise and a smoke screen, like today's whole press  conference itself," Matevosyan concluded.