New Constitution – new losses

The first 20 days of the new year 2024 marked as many political events as could fit into an entire year. Take a look:

1. The year began with an interview of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, which was dangerous for Armenia, crushed Nikol Pashinyan personally, and made it clear that Pashinyan’s concept of the “era of peace” had failed. It became clear to everyone, including those who have been conducting immoral propaganda in Armenia since 1994 on “surrendering Artsakh and living in peace with neighboring Turkiye and Azerbaijan”, that Ankara and Baku do not want peace but are preparing for war against Armenia.

2. This, in turn, proved that the Brussels-Washington negotiation format was not just a geopolitical scheme, resulting in the loss of Artsakh, but also put at risk the existence of Armenia since neither Artsakh nor Armenia itself received security guarantees. This happened because Pashinyan did not only limit himself to transferring the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiation process from the Moscow platform to the Western one but also began to actively destroy the entire complex of Armenian-Russian relations—the sabotage of the CSTO and anti–Russian hysteria in the Armenian media are clear examples of this.

However, Aliyev’s words forced Pashinyan to try to restore trusting relations with Moscow in an “emergency” mode. Armenia, through the mouths of “political Russophobes” Gagik Melkonyan and Andranik Kocharyan, stated that Russia had sent weapons to the country under interstate contracts, and Andranik Kocharyan’s friend Vagharshak Harutyunyan, who, among other things, works as the Armenian ambassador to Russia, was sent to Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Mikhail Galuzin and asked to “revive the negotiation format” in the Moscow-Yerevan-Baku triangle.

The response to Pashinyan’s proposal was voiced by Sergey Lavrov, who, on the one hand, divided the Armenian authorities from the Armenian people and, on the other hand, stressed that Russia’s position remains unchanged, with the points of the November 9 agreement being strictly observed. This means that Russia is not only not going to withdraw peacekeepers from Artsakh but also believes that Paragraph 9 of the agreement, which stipulates that the control of transport should be carried out by the Russian Federal Security Service, should be fulfilled.

3. These statements by Sergey Lavrov mean that Russia does not consider Nikol Pashinyan capable of negotiation, does not intend to provide him with political support, and does not intend to abandon the entire complex of trilateral agreements between the heads of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The latter, in turn, is unacceptable for Nikol Pashinyan, who considers the fulfillment of the November 9 agreements dangerous for himself, since after that, he “will be removed from the political map by all geopolitical players,” and first of all, he will not be able to hope for loyalty and support from the West, both when holding office and after the loss of power.

The lack of a geopolitical alternative forced Pashinyan to fulfill another requirement of the Aliyev-Erdogan duo and decide to change the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia.
With his statement on the need for a new Constitution, Pashinyan says that he is ready to meet the preconditions set by Turkiye and Azerbaijan, expecting guarantees in return for keeping him in power. A situational decision was needed, and he made it. After a certain time, he will find something else to give away to regain the favor of Ilham Aliyev and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and so on until the complete dissolution of Armenia as a separate sovereign state.

Pashinyan wants to remain in power, bluffing that he “will get a cadastral paper from Aliyev for 29,800 square kilometers and peace” if he changes the Constitution into the new one without mentioning a word about Artsakh and the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire and Western Armenia. However, only extremely naive people can believe this bluff.
In fact, Pashinyan’s announcement of his intention to change the Constitution is a response to the threats voiced by Aliyev earlier this year.

After Aliyev’s threats, even Pashinyan’s avid fans understood that Nikol was a political bankrupt. Aliyev, on the other hand, considers Armenia “Western Azerbaijan” and does not hide the fact that he considers not only Zangezur but also the whole of Armenia a corridor. Instead of a clear response to the threats, Nikol Pashinyan and his political team are leading Armenia along the path of new upheavals. In exchange for the new Constitution, Nikol wants to remain in power with the external support of Azerbaijan and Turkiye.