Firefighters examine the ruins of a house bombed by Azerbaijan in the Armenian city of Sotk. /
Hundreds of people surround the Parliament and the seat of the Government to protest what they consider a transfer of Nikol Pashinian
In the context of new armed clashes with Azerbaijan, hundreds of people took to the streets in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, on Wednesday afternoon and surrounded the Parliament building demanding the resignation of the country’s Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan. They accused him of “non-compliance with the interests of Armenia” and asked him in chorus to leave. At night another protest action was also taking place in front of the Government headquarters, where the same slogans were repeated.
It turns out that in the afternoon, during a speech before the deputies of the hemicycle, Pashinyan announced that he would be willing to sign an “unpopular” document with Azerbaijan in order to achieve peace. He stated that they wanted to “sign a paper, for which many people will curse us, call us traitors, even if the people decide to remove us from power, we will be more pleased and grateful if as a result of this. Armenia achieves lasting peace and security in an area of 29,800 square kilometers”, the extension of the country without counting the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Denial
If it is approved, he added, “I will make that decision (…) I am not interested in what happens to me but what happens to Armenia.” But the demonstrators do not agree with such a possibility, so Pashinian corrected himself before the crowd that he had not yet signed “anything” with Azerbaijan and denied that he intends to recognize the cession of Nagorno-Karabakh. He exhorted those gathered not to be “manipulated.”
This Tuesday the Azerbaijani Army attacked various Armenian towns, mostly on the border line, using heavy artillery, mortars and drones. The Baku Defense Ministry justified the offensive due to “large-scale provocations by Armenian troops.” The Azerbaijani military part maintained that “some positions, shelters and strongholds of the Azerbaijani Army in the territory of the Dashkesan, Kalbajar and Lachin regions were subjected to intense shelling by Armenian units.”
“On the Armenian side, along the Azerbaijani border, there is a concentration of offensive weapons, heavy artillery and personnel. All these facts once again testify that Armenia is preparing for a large-scale military intervention,” the Azerbaijani military statement said. After hours of skirmishes, at the end of the day, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev, according to his press office, declared that “the provocations committed by the Armenian forces on the border were avoided and all the planned objectives were achieved.”
But the shelling continued afterwards and on Wednesday as well, according to the Armenian authorities, who reported more than 150 of their soldiers killed since Tuesday and the occupation of ten square kilometers of territory by Azerbaijani forces. Now, Baku has offered Armenia a “humanitarian ceasefire”, after the one achieved a day earlier with the mediation of Russia and which has become a dead letter.
The war of 2020
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war in the fall of 2020 for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory under the sovereignty of Baku, but always inhabited by Armenians. The contest was won by Azerbaijan and Moscow intervened so that the parties signed a peace agreement, which Yerevan did not like either and which also provoked protests.
But a multitude of unresolved issues were left up in the air that have not yet been resolved. The exchange of prisoners and the border layout are among the main ones. The latter has been causing sporadic armed clashes and, on Monday night, the conflict broke out again. They are in fact the most serious clashes since the end of the 2020 war. The hostilities then ended precisely thanks to the mediation of Russia, which now has “peacekeeping” troops deployed in a sector of Nagorno-Karabakh.