Armenia undermines regional peace
By toxifying Karabakh separatists

ANALYTICS  29 June 2023 - 12:46

Only the top diplomatic leadership teams of Azerbaijan and Armenia began the second round of talks in Washington as the Armenian military, still illegally present in the Russian peacekeepers’ temporary zone of responsibility in Karabakh, opened fire on Azerbaijani army positions in the Aghdam district. An Azerbaijani soldier was wounded. Five Armenian servicemen had been killed in retaliation.

We will repeat it once again. The shelling of our positions is coming from the Russian peacekeepers’ area of temporary responsibility, not from the conditional border with Armenia. Is this evidence that official Yerevan has nothing to do with the escalation? Hardly. Rather, Pashinyan's team demonstrates a simple manoeuvre saying that they are not guilty and do not bear responsibility for Karabakh Armenians. Yes, they are. Yerevan's financing of the separatist regime makes it an accomplice and even initiator of criminal actions against Azerbaijan.

In addition, provocations on the conditional border in the run-up to the Washington meeting continued for several weeks. If Yerevan had been constructive, it would not have accommodated them in the first place. The aim of this shelling appears to have been to disrupt the Washington round. The Armenian side failed to do so - Baku responded to the shelling of the Lachin border checkpoint by closing it, once again adjusting to reality, forcing Yerevan to accept that reality and negotiate in accordance with it. Armenian diplomats had to fly across the ocean to meet their Azerbaijani counterparts. Recent armed provocation on the conditional state border these days openly demonstrates Armenia’s intention to disrupt the negotiations.

Naturally, Pashinyan and his team do not want to expose themselves in such unseemly intentions. And although one can assume an insignificant probability that Yerevan is no longer fully in control of the situation with its militants in Karabakh, in any of the options, one thing is clear, and perhaps the most important thing is that Moscow is the main initiator of the current escalation.

After all, it is under the warm wing of the so-called peacekeeping contingent that Armenian militaries and gangs are deploying freely, carrying out exercises and entrenching themselves under their protection. And it was Moscow that did not assist in the fulfilment of the fundamental provision of the Trilateral Declaration of November 10, 2020, which bears its signature - full withdrawal of all Armenian military from the territory of Karabakh. So, it is hard to doubt that Moscow is maintaining the hotbed of tension and now seems determined to obstruct the negotiations in Washington.

Meanwhile, the importance of these talks cannot be overstated. After the first four-day round of talks in Washington in early May this year, the sides made significant progress in agreeing on the principles of a peace settlement, which led to a follow-up meeting of the heads of state in Brussels in the middle of the same month. And it was after the Brussels meeting that Nikol Pashinyan publicly voiced the formula "Karabakh is Azerbaijan".

This experience shows that the White House invites foreign ministers only when it is convinced that the sides are ready to move forward. This means that the current round does not exclude agreement on the remaining issues. Considering the fact that after the recognition of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, the Armenian side continued to insist on the participation of international institutions in the Baku-Khankandi dialogue as the only precondition for concluding a comprehensive peace, we can assume that it was in this issue that progress was expected on the current American track.

It is possible that following the foreign ministers' meeting, the heads of state will already consolidate a certain interpretation at the subsequent meeting in Brussels on July 21, and that shortly afterwards Yerevan will abandon its absurd precondition, take concrete steps to curtail its support for the separatist regime, withdraw the remnants of its troops and stop its policy of deceiving the world community.

Such developments obviously do not suit the Kremlin, which seems to regard Karabakh as its second fiefdom in the South Caucasus, in addition to Armenia, and tries to be the sole moderator of the negotiation process. We know the price of this mediation, and Russian officials have repeatedly voiced it - the postponement of the signing of the peace treaty, citing the need to determine some kind of "future status of Karabakh". Needless to say, there will be no status, that the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces has sent it to the grave, as he proclaimed back in the Patriotic War. And the head of the Azerbaijani state never throws words into the wind, as everyone has seen.

Not a single step, not a single provocation by the Armenian side, aimed at disrupting the peace process, not only did not achieve its goal, but, on the contrary, only contributed to Baku in the unilateral strengthening of its positions.

It would seem that all this was clearly demonstrated, but Moscow and other patrons of Yerevan are trying to delay the locomotive of the reintegration of the Armenian population of the Karabakh region with Azerbaijan, which causes surprise and bewilderment. After all, it should be extremely clear that such a short-sighted approach risks seriously undermining relations between Russia and Azerbaijan, sealed in the Declaration on Allied Cooperation of February 22, 2022.

Further confirmation of Moscow’s involvement in the new escalation was the publication following the events on the Kremlin-controlled Rybar telegram channel. A thoroughly biased publication presented the news as if it was Baku that started the shelling, without mentioning the wounding of our soldier and flavoring the information with a complete set of complimentary concepts to the criminals such as the “artsakh republic”, etc.

A reluctance to recognise our state as the master of its own destiny has prompted Moscow's adversary in the Caucasus - Paris. After all, it is this capital, which does not have the ability to stage provocations on the ground, provides some semblance of political support for the aggressive Armenian project by initiating hostile initiatives in various European bodies and organizing vile anti-Azerbaijani hysteria in the media.

Recently, on the eve of the negotiations in Arlington, the chairman of the European Parliament's subcommittee on security and defence, French national Nathalie Loiseau, while visiting Armenia, visited the border section at the Lachin checkpoint and made a provocative statement against Azerbaijan. A ridiculous demarche. Well, we are just glad that Loiseau and other birds of passage are no longer able to penetrate Karabakh as they used to, and can only admire it from afar.

In the meantime, for one wounded Azerbaijani soldier, the Azerbaijani army has killed five enemy fighters. Moreover, two of the five terrorists killed tonight in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan are members of the Armenian Armed Forces, exposing official Yerevan's lie about the absence of its own troops in Azerbaijani territory. And this is just the beginning. It is a warning and a pledge that in case aggressive actions against Azerbaijan continue, new lines of Armenian mothers will come to the cemetery in Erablur.

The current situation is such that every step aimed at exacerbating the escalation only increases the number of casualties among the Armenian military and contributes to the accumulation of distrust and even hatred of ordinary Armenians towards unfortunate patrons.

Azerbaijan made it clear that "miatsum" (unity) is an enemy of Armenia. To support the mossy Armenian expansionist project means to enlist oneself in the ranks of the enemies of the Armenian people.

The patrons of Armenian revanchism will only achieve a civil revolt in Armenia that flare up not in protest against the so-called surrender of Karabakh, but vice versa, against the continuation of an aggressive policy, against any effort to revive the "miatsuma", against foreign instigators, against war and in the name of peace.

All those who cherishes the rudiment of a past era in the form of smoldering coals of a fake Armenian formation on the territory of Azerbaijan clings to the past. Azerbaijan is looking to the future. If you want to enter the future, do not disturb Azerbaijan.

Caliber.Az