Some Countries Have Used the Nagorno-Karabakh Issue to Restrict Armenia, Says Pashinyan

“What were our thousands of casualties for? Why did our soldiers perish? I have repeatedly, including publicly, asked this question and emphasized the importance of providing a very concrete and substantive answer. The answer is as follows: our soldiers died for the statehood, independence, and sovereignty of Armenia,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated during a discussion on the government's performance report for 2023 in the National Assembly.

“What justification does this explanation have? The conclusion is that since the OSCE Lisbon Summit in 1996, the Nagorno-Karabakh issue has not existed; there has been only the issue of Armenia in the sense that the international architecture, which de jure predetermined the content of the Nagorno-Karabakh question, was no longer willing to view Nagorno-Karabakh as anything other than part of Azerbaijan. And therefore, to avoid this acknowledgment and by giving vague and false hopes, some states have used the Nagorno-Karabakh issue to put a ‘collar’ on the Republic of Armenia, to restrain its actions as an independent state,” he announced.

According to Pashinyan, the negotiating opportunities available since 2016 were not about any resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, but rather about shortening the collar that was placed on Armenia, which already constrained its actions and efforts to function as an independent and sovereign state. “We did not take that path, and decisions were made in certain geopolitical centers to resolve the issue militarily, which led to the start of the 44-day war,” he noted.