"Armenia finally gives up on fighting for Karabakh's status outside of Azerbaijan" Armenian experts on high-level meeting

Armenian experts, as expected, gave a hostile reception to the meeting of the leaders of Azerbaijan, the EU Council and Armenia held on May 22 in Brussels, where Aliyev, Michel, and Pashinyan continued discussions on normalizing relations between Baku and Yerevan. At the same time, it is noticeable that they fear Russia's "falling out" of the negotiation process between Azerbaijan and Armenia mediated by Europe.

Thus, Naira Karapetyan, former deputy of the Armenian parliament, called the meeting in Brussels "five disastrous hours" and the result - was "another defeat" for Armenia.

"There is no issue about the status of Karabakh at all, the right to self-determination is not mentioned, instead, 'the rights and security of the ethnic Armenian population in Karabakh' were emphasised by Charles Michel, not the Armenian leader. Nagorno-Karabakh doesn't even have a name, it just became Karabakh, as Azerbaijan claims, there is no such administrative territory. This is the end, as if the issue is closed!" she said.

In addition, she expressed "concern" over the fact that Russia will be absent from a meeting of the commissions on the demarcation of the borders of the two countries in the border zone of Armenia and Azerbaijan scheduled for the coming days.

"Russia is completely out of the text of this statement. While the previous two statements emphasised statements and agreements reached through Russian mediation, this time there is no mention of it. There is no more mention of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship, the only measure where the right to self-determination is enshrined, such as the use of force and the exclusion of the threat of force.

These are just the conspicuous dangers. If after all that we don't make any conclusions, we won't deserve to have an independent Artsakh and independent Armenia," Karapetyan said.

Political scientist Varuzhan Geghamyan echoed her.

"Armenia definitively refuses to fight for Karabakh's status outside of Azerbaijan. There is not a single word about the status in the negotiations, only about 'the rights and security of the ethnic Armenian population in the Karabakh region', which would mean at best the Armenians living in Azerbaijan as a national minority, but in fact the complete expulsion of Armenians from Karabakh.

Moreover, the term 'Nagorno-Karabakh', which was based on the idea of a Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region, is no longer even used. The Brussels statement simply mentions the 'Karabakh region', which is already based on the idea of an administrative-territorial division of Azerbaijan, which does not assume a separate status.

A 'peace treaty' is being prepared with Azerbaijan, the key provision of which is the recognition of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity. For this reason, 'ensuring the rights and security' of the Armenians of Karabakh is mentioned only in the context of this agreement, since it will have no other status.

The statement said that the parties agreed on 'the principles of transit to various parts of Armenia through the territory of Azerbaijan'. This vague wording actually means that Armenia will transfer the so-called 'enclaves' in Armenia's Tavush and Ararat regions to Azerbaijan. In other words, the territory will be handed over to Azerbaijan, after which we will move from region to region with special permission and control. It is appropriate to remember the Goris-Kapan road, which suffered the same fate," Geghamyan said.