Nagorno-Karabakh is price Armenia has paid to become part of Western world, expert says

Speaking with Alpha News, Vladimir Batyuk, a research fellow at the Institute for US and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, commented on the meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers, Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov, which took place at the initiative of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington.

According to the expert, Nagorno-Karabakh and other disputed territories are the price Armenia pays for rapprochement with the West.

“The position of the Armenian authorities is that Nagorno-Karabakh and perhaps some other disputed territories are the price that Armenia must pay to end the conflict with Azerbaijan and, based on this, get closer to the West and become part of the Western world.

This is why Mr. Pashinyan made the decision that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan, and Armenia has no territorial claims on this issue. All this was done to become part of the Western world, to get closer to the West, to the United States, and to the European Union. And, as they believe in Yerevan, it was worth it. Karabakh was a condition of the European Union to a greater extent, but it was the United States that fully and completely agreed with this turn in Armenian policy,” Batyuk said.

“During the meeting in Washington, they obviously wanted to consolidate the results of the political and diplomatic processes that are underway in this region, which ended, so to speak, with the dissolution of Nagorno-Karabakh. The United States is striving to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict because, in this way, it will strengthen its positions in this region, which are very important for it,” Batyuk concluded.