Armenia makes peace impossible by decision to send mercenaries to Karabakh

Baku/29.06.22/Turan: Armenia announced a decision that  makes impossible peace talks between Baku and Yerevan,  and will rather provoke active hostilities in Karabakh.

On June 28, Colonel Sahak Sahakyan, Deputy Head of the Main Department for Personnel Management of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Armenia, announced the intention of the Armenian leadership to send citizens of this country to military service in Karabakh. “There will be no more conscripts in Artsakh,” he said.

According to Sahakyan, for the attractiveness of service in Artsakh, a serious package has been developed, according to which the vacancies of the Artsakh Defense Army will be filled with contract soldiers.

Peacemaker Ishkhan Verdyan, who lives in Istanbul, believes that such a step is in no way in line with the loudly announced agenda of the "epoch of peace" on which Nikol Pashinyan came to power in Armenia and which he reminds of at every opportunity.

“I consider this step to be extremely destructive, aggressive and provocative, which may well be interpreted by Azerbaijan as a military invasion, with corresponding deplorable results for Karabakh and Armenia. Not to mention the fact that with this decision, Pashinyan endangers the lives of the military personnel whom he is going to send to serve in Karabakh.

I want to warn my compatriots that any possible response from Azerbaijan may follow this, and this will not lead to anything good in the end.

I also think that with this step, Pashinyan, ignoring common sense, deliberately exacerbates the situation from scratch and deliberately leads it into such a dead end, from which there is only one way out - bloodshed.

From now on, I will personally attribute all deaths at the places of contact between the troops of Armenia and Azerbaijan to Pashinyan’s personal account, which he (guaranteed) will pay to future generations.

Peace is inevitable, but as long as the country is ruled by an enemy, it is impossible,” Verdyan added.

The intention to send Armenian citizens to serve in Karabakh clarifies the latest statements by President Ilham Aliyev and his military adviser Maharram Aliyev on June 26, warning Yerevan of the dire consequences that could fall on them if they continue their revanchist actions and dragging out border negotiations .

On March 24, 2022, the vice speaker of the so-called "National Assembly of Nagorno-Karabakh" Gagik Bagunts, commenting on Baku's demands for the withdrawal of troops from Karabakh, said that "The Defense Army continues its normal activities and does not plan to abandon it and thereby make a fatal mistake." https://rus.azatutyun.am/a/31767293.html

“Until there are clear guarantees for the security of the population of the Republic of Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh - ed.], we will keep all types of armed units,” Bagunts said.

The need for the service of contract soldiers from Armenia in the illegal NK armed forces is explained by the inability of the NK population itself to provide their armed forces with a sufficient number of manpower. Armenian military expert, coordinator of the Razm.info website Karen Vrtanesyan admits that even at the expense of Karabakh contract soldiers, the republic will not succeed in creating an army comparable in scale to the pre-war one. “So the sign “Artsakh Defense Army”, various titles and positions can be preserved, but there will be no army under it. At best, something like internal or border troops,” he noted in an interview with Kommersant.

In February, the President of Azerbaijan, at a meeting with Putin, said that he expected the withdrawal of all Armenian troops from the territory of Karabakh, referring to a tripartite statement dated November 10, 2020. Paragraph 4 of the tripartite statement says that the Russian peacekeeping contingent is being deployed in parallel with the withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces, without any specifics. But official Yerevan claims that Baku has not yet signed a mandate to deploy Russian peacekeepers, and Karabakh separatists claim that the November 10 Statement says nothing about the "Army of Nagorno-Karabakh."

Thus, actually fulfilling the orders of the Armenian opposition, Nikol Pashinyan threw another card into the already complicated Azerbaijani-Armenian relations, making a peaceful settlement impossible.-0-