Azerbaijan is Moving Towards the Prospect of Starting a Full-Scale War Against Armenia: Pashinyan

The Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikola Pashinyan, has stated that Azerbaijan regularly talks about territories of four villages while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge that 31 non-enclave villages of Armenia are under Azerbaijani occupation.

“Our position regarding this situation is very constructive. In order for troops to withdraw from their current positions, it is necessary to reproduce the Armenia-Azerbaijan border on the map and on the ground and to pull the troops of both countries back to that border line. In other words, after the reproduction of the border, if it turns out that there are troops beyond that line, both sides must pull back,” he said.

“Official Baku is trying to frame this situation in such a way that Azerbaijani troops will not withdraw from the territories of Armenia's 31 villages. This is not a constructive position, and again, on behalf of Armenia, I reaffirm our willingness to address specific solutions, the principles of which have already been agreed upon,” he added. The Prime Minister also noted that these principles have been documented in international platforms.

According to Pashinyan, Azerbaijan regularly avoids moving towards solutions. “We agree even with this option—to carry out border demarcation even region by region, to reproduce the border in every section, then to carry out the adjustment of troop positions according to the reproduced border, and to move on to the next section, leaving the exclave issues for the next phase. In other words, there are two options: first, carry out the demarcation along the entire border and move to its implementation; second, to divide the border into segments and go forward with boundary demarcation piece by piece. Both options are acceptable to us, but Azerbaijan is avoiding even this option,” he stated.

“Our analysis shows that there may be one reason for this: to initiate military operations in certain areas of the border, with the prospect of turning the subsequent military escalation into a large-scale war against Armenia,” Pashinyan noted.

The Prime Minister asserted that the policy of the Armenian government is to do everything possible to prevent such developments through active engagement in negotiations while firmly standing in defense of all legitimate interests of Armenia. “These legitimate interests are the protection of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Armenia. And I cannot fail to notice that several statements recently made by official Baku about Armenia’s legislative framework are an infringement of our sovereignty and interference in our internal affairs,” he emphasized.