ArmInfo. There is no panic among the residents of the Tavush region in connection with Armenia's intentions to transfer a number of villages in the region to Azerbaijan. Security expert, Chair of the Center for Women and Global Security Architecture Armine Margaryan stated, while speaking at the Armenian Center for National and Strategic Studies, commenting on the results of a visit to the region by a group of Armenian experts.
As Margaryan noted, local residents have very serious concerns about their future, since if the situation is resolved as RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan presented it during his visit to the Tavush region, there will be a risk of disruption to the ecosystem of local residents. "This means that local residents will either not be able to live in this area, or they will constantly be under threat to their lives. Thus, in this case we are dealing with people's safety," the expert noted.
The second concern, as Margaryan noted, concerns the threat of war, which the head of the Armenian government spoke about, which objectively caused difficult emotions among local residents, who have a question about who in this case bears the responsibility for ensuring security. "That is, we are again dealing with the issue of people's safety, since the residents of Tavush have the feeling that they were left alone with their problems," Margaryan emphasized.
She also pointed out that a fairly competent information war is being waged, primarily on the part of Russia, against the civilian observation mission of the European Union in Armenia, aimed at creating antagonistic sentiments among residents of the villages of the Tavush region towards EU representatives in order to remove them from the region . Moscow wants to keep its expectations high, intending to create a situation in which, if these expectations fail, it can be declared that "here's a Europe that hasn't done anything." "I myself have heard several formulations that the region is Russia's area of responsibility, and it is Moscow that must resolve the issue.
The situation, the expert believes, will develop in a negative direction if the attitude towards the effectiveness of the EU mission develops in a similar vein. All this is evidence that no work is being done with local residents at the state level. As they say, a holy place is never empty, and free information space is quickly filled with other messages," Margaryan said.
She noted that even if the process of delimitation and demarcation of borders takes place solely on maps, this will not bring peace to the region. "Even if we imagine that Azerbaijan will take this step in the same way, in any case, technically, the ecosystem of local residents will be disrupted, and their problems will not be resolved. It is difficult to imagine that Azerbaijan will take such a step and move away from the position it has already taken. Not We should also forget that all the nearest roads lead to Georgia," the expert emphasized.