Russian expert: Armenian Prime Minister`s Karabakh track is  sinusoidal, not straight

ArmInfo. Territorial integrity as Nikol Pashinyan's new value?  This question was asked by Sergei  Markedonov, Ph.D., leading researcher at the Center for Euro-Atlantic Security at the Institute for International Studies at MGIMO, after today's speech by RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in parliament.

The expert recalled that today, April 18, Armenian Prime Minister  Nikol Pashinyan was in the tops of news feeds. "The head of the  Armenian government said:" A peace agreement between Armenia and  Azerbaijan is realistic if both countries clearly, without ambiguity  and tricks, recognize each other's territorial integrity and  undertake today and forever not to present territorial claims to each  other. The Karabakh Autonomous Region was not part of the ArmSSR. All  the decisions of the Armenian authorities, adopted at the end of the  Soviet Union on the status of the NKAO, were not recognized by the  Union authorities (of course, the leadership of the AzSSR did not  support "Miatsum" by definition)," the political scientist noted.

At the same time, he stated that the news is presented as a  sensation. In this vein, Markedonov recalled that exactly a year ago,  the Prime Minister of Armenia in the National Assembly of his country  already stated the need to "lower the bar of demands" on Artsakh.

"This speech of his led to a sharp opposition protest, which,  however, soon died down. But the reasons for this development are  another story. Then, after the September escalation of 2022, he  announced his readiness to "make difficult decisions to guarantee  long-term security, stability and peace." Even if "this decision will  provide Armenia with a territory of 29.8 thousand square kilometers  (the territory of the ArmSSR) long-term peace and security." At his  joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron,  Pashinyan stated: "It is necessary to sign an agreement on peace  between Armenia and Azerbaijan with mutual recognition of the  borders, confirmed by the agreement of December 8, 1991 ("Belovezh  Accords"). Further, the Alma-Ata formula was also consolidated during  the Prague meeting in October 2022.  Thus, Pashinyan did not discover  anything fundamentally new," the Russian expert believes.

However, he saw the nuances in everything. Markedonov stressed that  the Armenian prime minister always talks about the territorial  integrity of not only Azerbaijan, but also Armenia. "And this issue  is not as simple as it seems. See the incidents that arise from time  to time in Syunik, Gegharkunik, Tavush. Not Karabakh alone, as they  say. The issue of demarcation and delimitation is no less complicated  than the issue of the status of the former NKAO. Yerevan always has  the opportunity to point out that Baku is not ready to support the  Armenian territorial integrity strictly within the borders of the  ArmSSR," the expert believes.

At the same time, the Russian political scientist drew attention to  the fact that Pashinyan, like probably no one else in Armenia, knows  how to change his positions. According to him, it is enough to read  the election program of the "Civil Contract" (2021), where, for  example, there is this: "One of the priorities of Armenia in the  negotiation process will be the de-occupation of the territories in  which the Artsakh people have self- determined:" "It turns out that  people voted not at all for what the prime minister later proclaimed.  You will say, but he changed his positions under pressure from Baku.  Everything is true, but in 2018-2019, having come to power, he turned  from a "dove of peace" into a hawk (Let's remember his famous  metaphor:  "Artsakh is Armenia and that's it!"). That is, the Prime  Minister's Karabakh track is sinusoidal, not straight,"  he stressed.

At the same time, Markedonov is sure that the problem is not only  related to Pashinyan, because opinion polls in Armenia record that  the idea of transferring Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijani  sovereignty is not popular in society.

"However, between the formulation of a position and the readiness to  defend it, there is a huge distance, which was shown by the protest  waves of 2020-2022, which failed over and over again. The last point  (in order, but not in importance). An accelerated peace is beneficial  to the West, peace is beneficial to Moscow too, but not at the cost  of squeezing it out of the settlement processes. And therefore Russia  insists that a formal document should crown the process of reaching a  compromise, and not precede it," Markedonov summed up.