Pashinyan. In case of peaceful surrender of the territories, the war could not have ended, but started on the outskirts of Shurnukh

Pashinyan. In case of peaceful surrender of the territories, the war could not have ended, but started on the outskirts of Shurnukh Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan published an article in which he referred to the origin of the recent war in Artsakh. “I also understand that this article is disappointing for all those who are tired of discussions about the past and want to see the future,” Pashinyan wrote. Referring to the talks, the head of the executive noted ․ “Formally, the negotiation process continues after 2016 based on the Madrid Principles or their configuration, but the Russian proposals exist, exist and their presence is felt everywhere, at least with the logic that the handover of 7 territories is the main process of the negotiation process by 2018. if not the only topic. ” Pashinyan also recorded “The whole point and goal of the negotiation process, which people have been conducting for 20 years, was to give Azerbaijan hope that it can achieve what it wants through negotiations through war,” and during that time, according to the Prime Minister, Azerbaijan was armed. Prime Minister’s full article below The question for the main part of the society is probably the following. Why did the 44-day war take place and why was it impossible to avoid it? The most direct answer to this question can be formulated as follows: The time had come for any event to take place in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. What is the basis for such an assertion? Over the past ten years, there have been several key milestones in the negotiations on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The first was the Kazan process, which supposed that the territories should be handed over to Azerbaijan under the 5 + 2 resolution, Artsakh should receive interim status, and the final status should be obtained through a referendum after the return of refugees. But the unpredictable happened? hand over 7 regions, but Azerbaijan wants more. More? In 2011, Armenia was ready to hand over the 7 regions, and does Azerbaijan want more? And what could be more? By not signing the Kazan document, Ilham Aliyev gave the answer to that question. First of all, the status of Karabakh, that is, the exclusion of the status of Karabakh outside Azerbaijan. This is back in 2011. After that, Azerbaijan’s appetite has increased and the evidence of this is that since 2013 the situation along the line of contact and on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border has become unprecedented. Border tensions increase in 2014 and 2015, and this is happening in “favorable” geopolitical conditions. Russia-West relations are strained due to the events in Syria and Ukraine, and Russia finds itself under sanctions. And if before that the primary hotspot for Russia was the South Caucasus, as of 2015, Crimea, Donbas and Syria are increasing. In all these places, Russia’s responsibility is growing, and no matter how much it is a superpower, Russia’s capabilities are not unlimited. Azerbaijan is seizing the opportunity and announcing its intentions for a military solution to the Karabakh conflict. In these circumstances, Russia is facing a rather difficult situation, realizing that the previous tools to keep the South Caucasus stable need to be reconsidered. The now well-known Russian proposals, which envisage the return of 7 territories to Azerbaijan under the 5 + 2 formula, the return of refugees, and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers, were born in 2013 and were finally finalized in 2015. The package of proposals did not address the issue of the status of Nagorno Karabakh in any way, it bypassed that issue. These proposals are presented to the Armenian side in January 2016. The Armenian side denies that the April 2016 four-day war took place in April 2016. Months after this event, Serzh Sargsyan speaks publicly about the weapons of the 80s, and a year and a half later he publicly admits that Armenia was ready to leave the 7 territories in 2011, but Azerbaijan wants more. Formally, the negotiation process continues after 2016 based on the Madrid Principles or their configuration, but Russian proposals exist, exist and their presence is felt everywhere, at least with the logic that the handover of 7 territories is the main part of the negotiation process by 2018, if is not the only topic. As for the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs have already adopted the logic that this issue is as debatable as it is debatable for Azerbaijan. All the Co-Chairs have come to terms with this idea, and the Russian proposals are, in fact, the Co-Chairs’ proposals. He adds fuel to the fire

as well as Turkey, whose hands have been freed and extended even further after the failure of football diplomacy, and he considers the handover of 7 regions the only precondition for the stability of the region. Azerbaijan, in turn, continues to state that no status of Nagorno-Karabakh is debatable outside of Azerbaijan, and after the appearance of Russian proposals, it aggravates its position that no status of Nagorno-Karabakh is debatable at this stage. Let the next generations address this issue. In this situation, we have inherited the negotiation process on the Nagorno Karabakh issue. to surrender or not to surrender? Getting acquainted with the essence and nuances of the negotiation process on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as Prime Minister led me to a thought. The negotiation process is a major process of retreat from the May 12, 1994 ceasefire. It is sad to note, but the Armenian side has not had any success in the whole negotiation process, it is a long history of failures. This story has several significant points. The first is the 1996 Lisbon Summit, where our loneliness in the world was recorded, the next is the expulsion of the Nagorno Karabakh representatives from the negotiation process, which gradually placed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the logic of the Armenia-Azerbaijan territorial dispute. The next goal is Azerbaijan’s refusal to discuss the status of Nagorno Karabakh, the next Russian proposals, the key problem of which is to exclude the status of Artsakh from the negotiating agenda. The only success of the Armenian side in the 23-year negotiation process was time, which, of course, would have been a significant success if that time could have worked in our favor. But the April 2016 war, when it was recorded that the Armenian army was fighting with the weapons of the 80s 22 years after the victory, also ended the era of procrastination. Not due to this fact, of course, but due to the fact that in the conditions of the aggravating international situation Russia was already tired of the accusations that in fact it is not in favor of a settlement, but a delay. In such conditions, we were faced with a simple choice: to fit into the logic described above and proceed to the process of handing over the territories, which were conventionally called “substantive negotiations” or to try to change the negotiation logic. Our actions since 2018 were aimed at solving this problem and the process reached its peak on March 12, 2019 at the joint sitting of the Security Councils of Armenia and Artsakh in Stepanakert, where I delivered a program speech agreed with the Artsakh authorities. The theses of that speech were the following. The issue of participation of Artsakh representatives in the negotiation process should be on our agenda, the Madrid principles should have a common interpretation, because Azerbaijan interprets it differently, Armenia differently, which makes the process inefficient, and then the societies need to prepare for peace and a solution to the Karabakh issue. It must be acceptable for the people of Armenia, for the people of Artsakh, for the people of Azerbaijan. The proposed agenda, however, was not at all a precondition for continuing the negotiation process, but for making it effective, a statement of our ideas. All these points were of fundamental importance. The expulsion of Artsakh from the negotiation process and the transfer of the negotiations to the Armenia-Azerbaijan level posed a threat, first of all, to Armenia, because using this circumstance, Azerbaijan was labeling Armenia an occupier. And then, such a format itself distorted the essence of the Karabakh issue, placing it in the logic of the Armenia-Azerbaijan territorial dispute. This was the biggest and most catastrophic diplomatic mistake in Armenia in the second half of the 1990s, which, by the way, could not have been allowed. At that time, yes, Armenia could have refused to negotiate without Karabakh, because Azerbaijan was not ready for war, had not recovered from the shock of defeat, and even the suspension of the negotiation process could not pose a significant threat to Armenia and Artsakh. By leaving the representatives of Nagorno Karabakh out of the talks, we did not even realize that we were reducing the chances of Artsakh’s self-determination, because what is the self-determination of the “occupied territory”, such a thing can not happen by nature. This was also the reason why the culmination of the negotiations in the first half of the 2000s became the concept of “exchange of territories”, for example, Meghri in exchange for Karabakh … Equally important was the clarification of the Madrid Principles. It is true that with the Kazan rejection, Azerbaijan aborted the Madrid Principles, but formally they still existed, and Azerbaijan commented that the Madrid Principles meant that the Armenians of Artsakh could self-determine only within Azerbaijan. Armenia claimed the opposite, which meant that the Madrid Principles were not a resolution to the issue,

something else incomprehensible. And next, in terms of public discourse, I came up with a rather constructive formula, publicly insisting that any solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must be acceptable to the people of Azerbaijan as well. The purpose of all this was to take the negotiation process on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict out of the primitive logic of handing over territories. And this is where the failure was, because it turned out that it is impossible to stop the train that moved in 2016. Many now say that the train could have been stopped by pro-Russian steps and pro-Russian policies, as if our government had done the exact opposite. The reality, however, is completely different, and those who speak in this way do not notice such turning points as the decision of the Armenian government to send deminers and doctors to Syria in 2019. presumption of common sense It is a matter of principle, of course, to what extent it is reasonable to try to resist the “train” and the speed train. And what is the opposite? The opposite is true: handing over territories for nothing. Now, of course, in retrospect we can say that it is better than what we have, at least we would have saved thousands of lives. But retrospectively. In retrospect, the same thing could have been done in 1997, 2004, 2011, 2016, and finally. Yes, it could be done in 2020 as well. But what argument would we use to convince ourselves? Will we lose the war? This argument, of course, was there. But in 2020 The July battles had a significant impact on the assessment of the situation. It is true that the scale of hostilities was very small compared to the subsequent war, but the July battles involved Azerbaijani elite units, Israeli drones, and our army not only resisted, but in the battlefield and during the battles we had no casualties. Our victims were killed in the rear. The July battles, of course, also played a negative role in the sense that Azerbaijan, realizing that it would not be able to achieve military success alone, decided to involve Turkey and Syrian mercenaries. This was the crucial moment when we had to make unilateral concessions. Until the July events, the Azeri rhetoric, which was constantly hardening, left no other option. By the way, Azerbaijan’s anti-Armenian propaganda was the only unchanging factor that existed for the last 15 years. The hatred of Armenians, the unequivocal recognition of Karabakh as Azerbaijani, the continuous propaganda to resolve the issue by force of arms had reached its peak. Even under these conditions, the negotiation process continued as long as the coronavirus epidemic allowed. The Foreign Minister was in constant discussions with the Co-Chairs. But in fact, Azerbaijan did not enter into negotiations, clearly showing that the goal of the negotiations for it remains the transfer of territories without preconditions. If we said yes, of course the war would have been prevented. We could have stopped the war in such conditions, which I announced on the first day of the war, at a special sitting convened in the National Assembly on the occasion of martial law. Such a version, however, was not only unacceptable to me, but also in those days I did not hear any voice that it should be done that way. Of course, there is a well-known counter-argument to this. others, the public did not have or could not have the information that the Prime Minister had and therefore the Prime Minister had to make a decision based on the information he knew. It is a correct argument, and the information I had was that the de-escalation of the situation or the cessation of the war is not possible without catastrophic consequences for Artsakh and Armenia. And so, the decision was to fight against those catastrophic consequences. Did we have more catastrophic consequences as a result? Maybe. But we know the possible scale of that other catastrophe theoretically. Now we do not know what the next catastrophe would be like in practice, as we did not know then the practical parameters of this one catastrophe. We only know that the “live” of the village mayor of Shurnukh would definitely be present in all scenarios, because the Ghubatlu region would be handed over to Azerbaijan in all the scenarios described above, the border dispute over 20 houses in Shurnukh and Vorotan would spread in the same way. But now we know that before we reached the Shurnukh border we fought for every inch of land. Were we going to fight during the peaceful surrender scenario? So, the war would start not in Horadiz, but in Shurnukh. According to this scenario, the war on the outskirts of Shurnukh is at least over, although now some people spare no effort, do everything possible and impossible to start the war again on the outskirts of Shurnukh. I know that this part of the article will bring a very plausible argument that in the case of a peaceful, negotiated transfer of lands, our negotiating position would be much stronger, because we would have acted as a winner and could have received more. Very well, we could have won in the past, when Azerbaijan was much weaker militarily. We had the position of the winner, a matter of negotiation

Throughout the history of the process, we have never used that position of the winner to ensure any specific result. There are other well-known “counter-arguments” to the logic of the article so far. Some claim that they knew the scenario of a successful continuation of the negotiations and were going to implement that scenario in 2018 and after. This is the peak of cynicism in general. In other words, would Russia and the other co-chairs abandon their proposed plan, and would the co-chairs agree to recognize Karabakh’s independence despite Azerbaijan? And again, you were implementing such a victory plan, you would have implemented it in Kazan, if you had implemented such a victory plan, you would have done so that a Russian plan would not have been created and put on the table, if you had prevented so much war, you would have prevented the April 2016 war. Implement the plan. Or do you have to argue that we were going to hand over the 5 regions to keep the two in order to link them with the status of Nagorno-Karabakh? It is a logical argument. But why should Azerbaijan agree in 2018 or 20 with what it strongly disagreed with in 2011 when Kazan refused to sign the document agreed at the level of foreign ministers? Let me remind you that at that time Azerbaijan was much less ready for war. Another shocking accusation has recently surfaced that my statements have deprived Azerbaijan of any hope of achieving a negotiated result that has made war inevitable. Please read this thought carefully. So, it turns out that the whole meaning and purpose of the negotiation process, which people have been conducting for 20 years, was to give Azerbaijan hope that it can achieve through negotiations what it wants to achieve through war. This is what I am saying. I say that the goal of the negotiations for 20 years was to give hope to Azerbaijan, and I actually became the one who disappointed Azerbaijan against the background of the hopes given to it before. What would be the end of the strategy of giving hope to Azerbaijan and when? We hoped for Azerbaijan, and it was buying weapons, at the same time recording in various international instances the “international discourse” of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within its territorial integrity. epilogue In fact, this was the part of the story of why the 44-day war began and under what circumstances. But, of course, it is important to talk about the course of the war, the chances of victory and the reasons for defeat, the signing of the November 9 statement, the post-war events and, most importantly, the future of Armenia and Artsakh. If necessary, I will touch upon those topics again. If it turns out that the article is still an acceptable genre for our society, it is also possible in the form of articles. Time will show: I also understand that this article is disappointing for all those who are tired of discussing the past and want to see the future. But such a talk about the recent and not so recent past is important to start a full conversation about the future. Share: