Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Tuesday that the international community’s silence on Baku’s aggressive policies against Armenia has emboldened Azerbaijan, thus allowing it to attack Armenia’s eastern border, which he called an act of aggression.
Pashinyan was speaking at a National Security Council session on Tuesday after an aggressive attack on Armenia Tuesday, which was halted after a ceasefire was declared through Russia’s mediation.
Below is the text of Pashinyan’s remarks as presented by his press office.
The current developments can be unequivocally assessed as a direct aggression against the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia.
As a result of the aggressive actions of Azerbaijan launched on May 12 of this year, Azerbaijan has occupied nearly 41 square kilometers (Eds: 10,000 acres) of the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia.
As a result of the silence from our international partners, Azerbaijan continues its aggressive actions. My assessment is unequivocal: Azerbaijan and the forces encouraging it are targeting our sovereignty, our statehood, our independence.
Yes, today we had a difficult day, and we are living through difficult days. But today we also showed that we are here, we exist, we are a state, we are a nation and the language of compulsion is inadmissible for us. We can negotiate, we can seek and find mutually acceptable solutions, we act as a responsible member of the international community. But we will not allow anyone to speak with us in the language of threats.
I call on the international community to make statements—targeted statements—condemning Azerbaijan’s aggression. Talk of a border dispute is absurd and senseless. There is no border dispute, there is aggression against the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia. The borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan have been clear since the Soviet era, by legally binding agreements. And if the problem was a border dispute, then Azerbaijan should have accepted our proposal of withdrawing forces simultaneously from the borderline between Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan, deploying international observers along the borderline and launching the process of demarcation and delimitation of borders long ago. Azerbaijan, which has not accepted this proposal, is an aggressor state and must unequivocally withdraw its forces from the sovereign territory of Armenia. Its hopes to impose its will on Armenia are futile.
The Government and the people of the Republic of Armenia are determined, and we will defend our sovereignty, territorial integrity, statehood and independence by all possible means.
At the same time, we continue to emphasize the need for a peaceful resolution of the situation, all our previous proposals remain in effect. We are committed to the provisions of the November 9 and January 11 trilateral statements.
Nikol its you. YOU have emboldened our enemies, you weak pathetic coward.
You have put Armenia into turmoil with your acts of revenge, how many ministers have sacked, appointed and sacked again?
The enemy is laughing at us, their dreams came true when you with your promises only brought war and destruction,
We have over 7 Million Armenian in the diaspora, all of you should be ashamed, our diaspora leaders should be ashamed… Yes you pathetic diaspora leaders with your selfish interests, from USA to Australia all of you should bow your heads in shame….
There are no leaders just BS yappers, from priests to all politicians. POS Nicol is destroying your loving Armenia and you are all silent.
We have no international partners he speaks of, except Iran.
I guess according to incompetent Pashinyan everyone is responsible for the actions of illegitimate artificial Azerbaijan’s MAFIA gang against Armenia except Pashinyan himself. What a joke! This sorry excuse for a leader is out of touch with reality altogether. He creates the situation the country is in and then complains and wonders why no one says or does anything. He himself ordered the Armenian armed forces not to engage the enemy so as to maintain the fragile so-called ceasefire conditions. It is as if he has no clue about the true Turkish character. The more he appeased the enemy the more emboldened the enemy got which created the situation the country is in right now in the first place. This speaks directly to his inexperience and incompetence as a leader. How can you order your armed forces not to engage the enemy for their incursion into your sovereign territory when it is their job and duty to repel and if necessary to destroy the enemy? They have taken an oath to do exactly that and you are interfering in their sacred task to keep the country secure? For the last several years prior to the war, he also dismissed all the experienced and battle-hardened army officers and generals from their positions, in particular those appointed by the former regime(s) who had fought the enemy with countless victories in the 1990 Liberation War, and most likely because he feared them, replacing them with inexperienced ones subservient to his commands and demands. Granted not we but the enemy decides if and when to start a war based on its capabilities, including the direct military involvement of NATO member terrorist Turkish enemy along with other criminal participants, but the fact remains that he helped expedite the enemy’s criminal actions with his inaction and lack of preparedness including his deliberate and antagonizing public announcements with no plan of action to back them up.
Instead of uniting the nation around the defense of the homeland and the liberated regions, instead of bringing the country into a complete state of readiness through compromise with opposition groups and call into action hundreds of thousands of reservists, and instead of allowing patriotic volunteer groups from forming and serving in the front lines, he engaged in internal deception and power grab and then instead of conducting himself in the interest of the nation like a true patriot would act by resigning from his position he continues to stay in power and be an embarrassment to the nation and the laughing stock of the enemy and the world. He asks the Russians for help, despite the mess he helped create, while not realizing that Russia itself had a lot to do with the start and the outcome of the latest disastrous war imposed on the nation. Asking Russia for help in this context is like asking a fox to watch over the henhouse! The Russians were the ones who changed the balance of power in favor of the enemy against their own presumed Armenian ally by arming the enemy, at an annual rate equal to Armenia’s annual state budget, AND by turning a blind eye to the unprecedented military presence of their own NATO member Turkish enemy in their backyard and all this for a short honeymoon they are having with genocidal Turkey against the West. One using the other at the demise of the Armenian nation. The Russians using the Turks against the West by selling them NATO-banned Russian air defense systems in billions of dollars and the Turks using the Russians by such purchases as bribe money for the Russian indifference to their presence in Armenia’s backyard and for showing no concern whatsoever for conducting aggressive military exercises with Azerbaijani enemy a mere fifty kilometers from the Armenian capital!
As usual, the Russians conducted their dirty business at the expense of the Armenian nation. They did the same a hundred years ago when Lenin collaborated with Ataturk to invade Armenia and then the Russians moved in the last minute disguised as “saviors” and took for themselves what was left. The Russians used Armenia to iron out their Syrian issues with terrorist Turkey at the expense of Armenia in the South Caucasus. They taught our impotent and unpatriotic leader, a journalist turned prime minister, a lesson for cozying up to the West, 2008 Georgia rings a bell, from which he seems he has not yet learned anything at all as evidenced by asking for assistance from the Russian wolf in sheep’s clothing! This guy should have no business leading a country, let alone a country in a constant state of war and for the last thirty years.
NOBODY GIVES SHIT ABOUT ARMENIA!!!!!! 5000 YEARS OF ARMEENIAN HISTORY!!!!!!!! WHY ARMEEENIA AND ARMEEENIAN PEEOPLE NOT LEARN??????? ONLY ARMEENIA CAN HELP ARMEEENIA!!!! ONLY ARMEEENIA CAN SAVE ARMEENIA!!!!!! STOP STEEELING MONEY!!!!! START OBEY LAW!!!! WORK TOGETHER!!!!!! SAVE ARMEEENIA!!!!!!
This contempt and finger-pointing towards Pashinyan is laughable at best. Thirty years of corruption, incompetence, arrogance and an unwillingness to face reality are what led to our current state. It doesn’t matter who had been PM last year, the result would have been the same. Your negative comments do nothing to promote a solution, but are quick to judge past actions. Perhaps you should take into account the decades of sitting idly by while our enemy stocked up on modern weaponry, all while we watched and did nothing. Ararat, you criticize Armenia’s dependence on Russia, and follow up immediately by criticizing Pashinyan for turning to the west. What would you have done differently that would have caused a decisively different outcome?
My Answer to Zaven!
I know It is a very long answer but often times it is impossible to get one’s message across without some analysis and context. So this is what I think based on my understandings.
The relationship between Armenia and Russia is flawed. It is not based on mutual interests and mutual respects and it is one-sided. Russia’s interests in the region overlap and are more in line with our enemies than they are with ours. Furthermore, Russia seems to dictate Armenia’s foreign policy and they are very successful in doing so by making Armenia fully dependent on Russia. All Armenian leaders, not just Pashinyan alone, are complicit in this. Successive Armenian leaders have put their proverbial eggs in one basket by relying fully and only on Russia. It is because of such high reliance that when they need their help in critical times and either don’t get it or it is delayed they are left with no alternatives. It is because of this dependency that Russian leaders have our leaders in their back pockets. When you are completely dependent on a foreign state, militarily in particular, whose interests are more in line with your enemies and the ultimate goal of these enemies is the destruction of your statehood, the anti-Armenian euphemism of “two states, one nation” comes to mind, then you are headed for disaster. You will never get out of this dependent and dire situation unless you act like a sovereign state and take your destiny into your own hands. This does not mean you have to be anti-Russian or pro-Western. In fact, given their proximity and historical ties with Armenia, it makes more sense to have closer ties with Russia but not at Armenia’s expense! The relations between the two have to be based on mutual understanding and respect and it can never be detrimental to one or the other. This can be accomplished by creating a political atmosphere in which Russia considers and treats Armenia like an equal partner and not just a dependent follower. It also means that Armenia must diversify its weapons acquisition so that it is not dependent on single entity and by creating industries that manufacture weapons internally. The more independent you become the more you will be respected. It also seems that over the years our leaders have failed to make Russians realize that Armenia is as much important to Russia as Russia is to Armenia.
Unlike our former leaders who had very close ties with Russia and had gained and maintained the trust of the Russian leadership, for the right or the wrong reasons and I am not defending them by any means, Pashinyan seemed to be a suspect from the Russian perspective for his dealings with the West. The timing in which all these things occurred was very important too. Pashinyan came to power, not by a revolution as they like to claim but by a regime change, at a time when Russian conflict with Ukraine over the Crimean Peninsula had intensified and the West was much more involved on the Ukrainian side. Also, at this time, terrorist Turkey’s leader Er-dog-an was not only in serious conflict with his western allies, over their purchase of Russian S-400 air defense system as well as being kept out of the F-35 fighter jet program, but that he also was in a honeymoon period with the Russian leader Putin against the NATO alliance to which terrorist Turkey belongs. The closer the ties between terrorist Turkey and Russia the closer by association and less antagonizing Russia becomes towards our enemy artificial Azerbaijan over its conflict with Armenia. In addition, just like Turkey’s neo-Ottoman terrorist Er-dog-an who considers parts of the region, such as northern Syria and even parts of the Caucasus, as former and now-defunct Ottoman territory, the Russian leader Putin considers the entire Caucasus and other regions as part of the now-extinct former Soviet Union whose collapse, according to him, was the biggest tragedy that befell the Russian nation in late last century.
It is because of all these things coming together in such a short period, as well as the true views of Russia and of our traditional enemy terrorist Turkey over this region, that I say the 2020 war was preplanned by terrorist Turkey and artificial criminal Azerbaijan with full knowledge of Russia as evidenced by Russia’s inaction and lack of any concern for its alleged Armenian ally. Therefore, Pashinyan asking Russia for help in these conditions was like asking a fox to watch over the hen house! The West did not lift a finger to help Armenia and primarily because of multi-billion dollar investments in Caspian oil and gas and their shipment to energy-hungry Europe. The West was in no way going to get involved militarily, perhaps only supplying some weapons at best, on Armenia’s side and therefore Pashinyan’s cozying up to the West, as perceived by the Russian leadership, had created even more problems for Armenia in Russia’s backyard given the suspicion and lack of trust between Russia and the current Armenian leadership. In other words, if we were to believe that Pashinyan was picked legitimately and by majority and legitimate Armenian voters then he was not Russia’s choice to lead the country like his predecessors were.
We have come full circle once again and realized yet again that we don’t have any real friends in this world. We don’t have oil the world’s superpowers can exploit so they would be obligated to help us in order to help themselves. Given all these facts, what do we do then? We become realistic and rely on ourselves only. We do that by minimizing, if not completely eliminating, our dependency on foreign powers. We become self-reliance by getting rid of internal corruption thus increasing and elevating the trust of the wealthy and capable Armenian Diaspora throughout the world to invest in the country to make the country stable and strong. When the country is stable, strong and secure, not only the native population has no reason to look elsewhere but those living outside the homeland will want to return to their ancestral homeland and be a part of the development and strengthening of the country.
Only Russia can help Armenia, forget the West, they didn’t do shit in 100 years, and they are not going to do shit next 100 years, except talk, and talk, and more talk. Armenians instead of counting on themselves and work together to build a strong Armenia, all they do is talk, fight between them, and blame the others for their mishaps.