If the road remains closed, bread and food must be brought to the village regularly… will the road be opened or not, no one can say: Shurnukh Mayor

The Goris-Kapan and Goris-Vorotan roads in the Syunik region continue to remain closed. The enemy closed these roads on the evening of August 25. Negotiations have taken place to open them, but they ended without success.

In an interview with 168.am, the head of the Shurnukh community in Syunik, Hakob Arshakyan, stated that there has been no change in the situation; negotiations have ended, but the roads remain closed.

Regarding the village of Bardzravan, which has been isolated due to the road closures, Hakob Arshakyan mentioned that the regional administration has organized food deliveries to the village by an emergency situations vehicle. “If the road remains closed, we will have to regularly bring bread and food to the village; according to the schedule, the emergency situations vehicle is expected to enter the village twice a day. I don’t know whether that road will eventually be opened or not; no one can say,” noted Arshakyan.

When asked why Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan refers to the names of two Armenian communities in the Syunik region in Azerbaijani, Arshakyan noted that Pashinyan's comments pertain not to Shurnukh and Karmrakar but to the interstate section of the Goris-Kapan road.

Notably, during today’s government session, in reference to the closures of roads in Syunik, Nikol Pashinyan justified the reason by stating that his main message when presenting the government program in the National Assembly was about opening an era of peaceful development for the region and Armenia, which has led to the now familiar situation. “I hope that the situation will settle down shortly. Politically, it is clear to me that this action was taken to undermine our proposed peace agenda and to discredit that agenda. Azerbaijan's behavior indicates that such incidents may occur again. Our services must remain vigilant and attentive, but on the other hand, we need to keep our nerves steady, and we must continue to advance our strategic line and peace agenda,” said Pashinyan.

Pashinyan also added that the situation regarding the roads in Syunik was not unexpected, and during this time, efforts have been made towards the formation of new infrastructure and will continue to be made. However, the reopening of the roads in the Ayvazli and Chayzami areas could become a very good symbol of regional stability.

It is noteworthy that on May 12, the enemy, having violated the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, advanced several kilometers into the territories of Syunik and Gegharkunik. They remain in those encroached areas and are not retreating. Several rounds of negotiations have been held in Syunik to convince the enemy to withdraw, but to no avail. Leaders and residents of neighboring villages report that enemy soldiers have advanced with some maps and claim they have received orders from higher-ups to move forward, as they consider those territories to be Azerbaijani.

It is also important to remember that after the 44-day war in Artsakh, when Nikol Pashinyan signed the document giving away 75 percent of Artsakh, in which no point regarding the Armenian-Azerbaijani border was included, under the silent agreement of Pashinyan and the Minister of Defense, all advantageous positions in the Syunik and Gegharkunik regions were handed over to the enemy, resulting in several villages simply falling into the enemy's crosshairs.