Pashinyan and Putin Agree Azerbaijan Must Leave Armenian Territory, Says Armen Grigoryan

We have made demands for them to leave the sovereign territory of Armenia, but the Azerbaijanis continue to stay and conduct provocations. This was stated by the Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia, Armen Grigoryan, during a broadcast on Public Television, addressing the border situation.

“The process is underway to convey all this information to the CSTO and to begin discussions to understand what solution we will provide for the situation. Compared to noon, the tension has decreased, but that does not mean that calm prevails; there is still tension. Today there has already been a victim at the border, and this completely changes the situation. The CSTO needs to accelerate the process of starting a mission and sending it out. The CSTO is also obligated to send a mission to the conflict zone or the territory of a given state in the created situation, in order to assess the situation,” he said.

According to Grigoryan, as a result of discussions between Armenia's Prime Minister and the President of the Russian Federation, there is also an agreement that Azerbaijan must leave Armenian territory: “This is the stance, and everyone, so to say, shares this perspective.”

The Secretary of the Security Council added, “If we cannot provide a rapid resolution through peaceful diplomatic means, then the situation will approach that described in Article 4, and in that case, Armenia will have to resolve the issue differently with its CSTO partners. We continue to hope that the problem can be resolved through a political and diplomatic path.”

He noted that the public's expectations have not yet become a reality quickly, but he is confident that the issue will find a resolution. “Since there are processes within the CSTO framework, our allies' position is that the issue can be resolved peacefully and diplomatically. This incident shows that the opportunities for resolving the issue peacefully and diplomatically are running out, and I will add that the situation is creating grounds for invoking the CSTO’s Article 4, which the CSTO must take into account. We continue to hope that the issue will be resolved through political-diplomatic means; if suddenly this is not possible, we will have to use other instruments,” he stated.

When asked whether it is the Government's viewpoint that discussing the status of Artsakh should be aligned with border demarcation work, Grigoryan responded, “We have said that after the withdrawal of troops, a possible environment can be created so that we can start discussing these issues. We find that these issues are interconnected; it is impossible to discuss our problems with Azerbaijan separately; everything is interrelated.”