Will Pashinyan bring Azerbaijanis to Armenia and grant them special status?

Speaking on September 23, 2022, at the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan addressed Azerbaijan with the question: “Could you show the map of Armenia, the territory that you are ready to recognize as the Republic of Armenia?” Just a few days later, Pashinyan was in Prague, where he surrendered Artsakh by recognizing the “territorial integrity of Azerbaijan” according to Aliyev’s maps. Already in November 2025, it became clear to the public that Azerbaijan does not recognize Armenia on any maps. “On maps from the early 20th century, there is no Lake Sevan, there is Lake Goycha,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said at a gathering marking the 80th anniversary of the National Academy of Sciences.

Responding to Aliyev, Pashinyan said on November 4 that politically the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is over, but in the socio-psychological dimension it continues. “Since gaining independence, our societies have not known what peace is. The conflict defined our thinking, our politics, and relations between peoples,” he said.

Pashinyan also responded to statements about the “return” of Azerbaijanis, which Ilham Aliyev had spoken about the day before. “After returning from the Washington summit, I said that the topic of the return of Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh is harmful, and in general I consider the refugee and internally displaced persons agenda dangerous, because it means returning to the previous parameters of the conflict,” he said.

To sum up, we can note that Pashinyan does not consider it appropriate to talk about the return of Armenians to Artsakh, and believes that politically the conflict with Baku has been settled. However, this does not align with the fact that Azerbaijan’s presidential administration openly supports a project expressing territorial claims against Armenia — the so-called “Western Azerbaijan” initiative.

A leak of documents from the Azerbaijani presidential administration shows that the “Western Azerbaijan” campaign—presented officially by Baku as a humanitarian initiative—is in fact a carefully planned state program aimed at justifying possible territorial claims against Armenia. This was reported in an investigation by OC Media. The term “Western Azerbaijan” is used to refer to the territory of modern Armenia.

The Azerbaijani authorities present the campaign as a movement for the “return of Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia” in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, according to experts, behind the rhetoric of “return” lies the idea that Armenian lands historically belong to Azerbaijan. Notably, the investigation was carried out by Western journalists, and even Pashinyan will find it difficult to label them as “KGB agents.” It will be difficult to claim that this article is a hybrid war against Armenia.

Did Pashinyan need OC Media’s investigation to realize that Azerbaijan’s leadership supports the “Western Azerbaijan” project at the highest level? Of course not. Pashinyan knows that under his leadership, if his government remains in power, Armenia will suffer many losses—the only question is when.

Think about it…