Azerbaijan “zeroed out” Nikol Pashinyan’s press conference

Nikol Pashinyan’s press conference was held at the Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concert Complex on August 31. Answering various questions from Armenian journalists, he tried to convey the idea of Armenia’s readiness to sign a “peace treaty” with Azerbaijan, open the “era of peace” and implement the “Crossroads of Peace” project.

Among other things, Pashinyan stated that Yerevan is ready to open automobile traffic with Azerbaijan “even tomorrow”, invited Baku to sign a peace treaty based on the already agreed articles of this document, did not rule out Armenia’s participation in the COP29, which will be held in the Azerbaijani capital in November, and also introduced a formula according to which “one should not look for winners or losers from the delimitation process.” He positively assessed the fact that the commissions on border delimitation signed a “Regulation on joint activities.” But how did official Baku react to Pashinyan’s statements?

1. Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan Hikmet Hajiyev said that the agreement on the border commission “should be seen as sufficient for the withdrawal of the EU contingent,” POLITICO reported.

2. Hajiyev also said the restrictions should be applied to the Armenian armed forces. “Armenia was an invader. If we look at the system of international relations after the Second World War, we will see that there are very few invaders and aggressors, and Armenia is one of them,” he said.

In just a few days, the Azerbaijani side “zeroed out” Pashinyan’s entire press conference with a couple of statements, once again demonstrating that within the framework of the current negotiation format (formally without intermediaries, but under Turkey’s control), without Armenia’s allies, the “era of peace” risks turning into Armenia writing its own obituary…

It is also important to understand that Armenia’s negotiating position is weakened because official Yerevan destroyed its deeply layered defense system by surrendering Artsakh, leaving the Armenians without Artsakh, and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic without Armenians.

Back in the spring of 2022, a number of experts warned both the country’s authorities and the Armenian public that Pashinyan’s statements about his readiness to “lower the bar of expectations for the status of Artsakh” would lead to the fact that the bar of the status of Armenia itself would decrease. This actually happened, and a year and a half after Pashinyan’s statements, Armenia’s status dropped to the level of a state whose territory is occupied by an aggressive neighbor demanding to change the country’s Constitution, abandon the rearmament of Armenia, and cede control of communications through the territory of Armenia.

All these are consequences of Pashinyan’s decision to surrender Artsakh. Pashinyan and Aliyev are actually jointly preparing a new capitulation of the Republic of Armenia, which will allow Baku to finally focus on the implementation of the political project “Western Azerbaijan.”

Think about it…