‘We expect that...’ Pashinyan on peacekeepers

Armenia expects that any attempt to breach the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh will be halted by the Russian peacekeeping forces, and that Azerbaijani units located within the contact line will be withdrawn. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this during a government session held on August 4, referring to the heightened tensions in Artsakh in recent days.

“There are several institutional issues related to the topic. In particular, the third point of the trilateral statement of November 9, 2020, clearly states that there is a contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh along which the Russian peacekeeping forces are deployed. This area is referred to as the responsibility zone of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh. We expect that any attempt to breach the contact line will be halted by the Russian peacekeeping forces, and the Azerbaijani units located within the contact line will be withdrawn,” said Nikol Pashinyan.

Returning to the topic of the mandate of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan expressed the opinion that the signatures of Armenia and Russia are sufficient to fully implement that mandate. “If not, then measures should be taken to internationally affirm that mandate or to endow the peacekeepers with a broader international mandate. I do not want to reveal many working details now, but these issues have concerned us since November 2020, we have made efforts to achieve specific solutions, and now those efforts need to be doubled and tripled,” said Nikol Pashinyan.