I Spoke with Pompeo at Midnight: Nikol Pashinyan on Failed Ceasefire

It is now clear that once again the ceasefire could not be maintained. I cannot say what the reaction of the co-chairing countries of the OSCE Minsk Group and their presidents will be, but you should know that the Armenian side did everything to ensure the ceasefire is preserved.

This was stated today, October 26, by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during a live broadcast on his Facebook page, which he titled: ‘Another Failed Ceasefire’.

“The Artsakh Defense Army had been very restrained since the morning, but nevertheless, it could be noted in the second half of the day that the ceasefire, in fact, did not happen. This is already the third time that we have failed to maintain a ceasefire,” said Pashinyan, recalling that last night US President Donald Trump even congratulated the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan on the agreement reached.

“We do not yet know how the authors of this initiative, the US president, will respond to the failure of the ceasefire, but I want to say that after midnight I had a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and directly told him that since this is their first ceasefire, while for us it is the third, I can roughly predict what will happen tomorrow. I said that tomorrow it is highly likely that the ceasefire will not be maintained, and Azerbaijan will state that it is the Armenian side that has violated the ceasefire.”

The main question I posed to the US Secretary of State is the following: a) if the ceasefire does not happen, how will you determine who is to blame, and b) what consequences will the violation of the ceasefire have for the party that breaks it?

“Of course, I do not consider it correct to say what the US Secretary of State’s response was. I hope that the US representative will answer these questions today, as it is already dawn there. That is, did they determine who was responsible for the violation of the ceasefire, and if they did, what consequences will that have for the party that violated the ceasefire,” Pashinyan stated, adding that these answers are also important in terms of the kind of world we live in.

“Can you imagine a situation where the efforts of the presidents of Russia, the US, and France to establish a ceasefire and find a diplomatic solution go in vain? Moreover, they sincerely want the ceasefire to be established, because they put their names on all of this. In the case of the US, the situation is more complicated, as there is currently an electoral campaign in that country, and essentially, it is about President Trump’s ability to influence the international situation. If the US, Russia, and France cannot establish a ceasefire in this conflict zone, it means that we are currently living in a completely different world, and we must understand what that world represents. I do not claim that this is the case, as we still hope that the efforts of the three presidents will yield specific results,” said the Prime Minister of Armenia.