‘Pashinyan needs a reason to turn towards the West’: expert on Armenian PM’s new accusations against CSTO

Speaking with Alpha News, Belarusian political scientist Alexey Dzermant commented on Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s accusations of two CSTO countries of preparing a 44-day war against Armenia.

According to the political scientist, Pashinyan wants to shift his responsibility to others.

“Firstly, you need to understand that neither Belarus nor Russia had anything to do with the beginning of the conflict around Karabakh. These two countries have repeatedly made efforts to resolve this issue peacefully. Blaming Russia and Belarus for helping the Azerbaijanis prepare for war is, in my opinion, incorrect and wrong. As a matter of fact, the Armenian side itself did not recognize Artsakh and did not provide the necessary assistance during the outbreak of the war.

Who else but Armenia should have tackled security issues then? It seems to me that Pashinyan, in this case, is trying to shift his responsibility to third parties. Nobody stopped Armenia from preparing for this war for years. The current Armenian leadership and the previous one failed to cope with this task,” Dzermant said.

According to the expert, Pashinyan needs a reason to turn towards the West.

“Belarus and Russia have repeatedly made efforts and offered different options for resolving the conflict. All of them were eventually rejected by Armenia, and as a result, Azerbaijan started military actions. This is where we need to look for the root of the problem—the reason for what happened— rather than blame third parties. It seems to me that for Pashinyan, this is simply a maneuver for manipulation to shirk responsibility.

Well, as far as I understand, he needs a reason to begin turning away from integration within the CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) to the West. He seeks a reason to do this. In this case, the reason is that Russia and Belarus allegedly did not provide and are not providing any support. It seems to me that this is a reason to justify his shift to the West, accusing Belarus and Russia of failing to fulfill their allied duties,” Dzermant concluded.