Who is actually sabotaging the signing of a peace treaty and unblocking communications?

Official Baku continues to “torpedo” Nikol Pashinyan’s statements made during his latest press conference. Following Hikmet Hajiyev’s demands regarding the withdrawal of European observers from Armenia and restrictions on the armament of Armenia, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov refused Pashinyan’s offer to sign a peace treaty based on 13 articles already agreed between the parties. Bayramov advised the Armenian side to address the issue more seriously. “Armenia has excluded several important points from the draft peace treaty. We will soon submit to Armenia an option that is based on international law and meets our national interests,” he said.

In other words, there will be no “stripped-down” format of a “peace treaty.” Baku continues to be guided by the principle of “why take a part if you can take everything” and wants to get the most out of negotiations with Armenia.

If there is no peace treaty, there is no legitimacy of the Pashinyan government. After all, it was with statements about peace that he went to the early election in 2021. Another important thesis of 2021 was related to the unblocking of communications. However, three years later, communications through Armenia are not only closed but also bypass Armenia, giving the “Crossroads of Peace” project its real name, “Pashinyan’s Dead End”.
Yesterday it became known that the first freight train with 70 wagons from Ulyanovsk to Azerbaijan will depart in September this year. This route, being part of the more global North-South project, is designed to transport 200 thousand tons of cargo per year. Each train is designed to transport 3.5 thousand tons of products, from manufactured goods to agricultural products.

This is where the legitimate question arises: who is actually sabotaging the signing of a peace treaty and unblocking communications?

Armenia has the wrong approach to the issue of the treaty, even in terms of the philosophy of the process: in order for Baku to conclude an agreement, since 2020, Armenia should have kept Artsakh, tried to resolve the issue of the duration of the peacekeepers’ stay in Nagorno-Karabakh, made their mandate indefinite, reformed the army together with Russia, and conducted a number of exercises aimed at strengthening military cooperation with the IRGC troops. This would have restored the military and political balance in the region to a certain extent, Baku might have had concerns that Armenia might reconsider the results of the 44-day war, which would have made a peace treaty a guarantee of maintaining the status quo. Azerbaijan would have been interested in a peace treaty if it had seen in it guarantees of its security. But since the Pashinyan government did not do any of the above but began to be guided by the formula “our security is in our defenselessness”, justifying everything—from the surrender of part of the Goris-Kapan highway, villages in the Tavush region to the recognition of Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan—we ended up in a situation when the country is turning into “Pashinyan’s Dead End”.

Think about it…