�Pashinyan is more separatist than Sargsyan and Kocharyan�, political expert E.Shainoglu

"Armenians will not give up their territorial claims on Karabakh, and Yerevan"s supporters will not cease to protect the interests of an ally, even if Azerbaijan starts democratic reforms and becomes the most liberal country of the Caucasus," Elhan Shainoglu, head of Atlas Analytical Studies, said at a press conference, held in the International Press Foundation "Eurasia". He answered a question about the claims of a Yerevan politician who told Turan editor Shahin Hajiyev that official Baku cannot take responsibility for the security of Karabakh Armenians, since it does not provide the level of democracy required by Azerbaijanis.

"Pashinyan was deceiving Azerbaijan, posing as a supporter of a peaceful and mutually beneficial solution to the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict. Many of us thought, and now Pashinyan is still considered a peacemaker, a successor of the famous ideas of Levon Ter-Petrosyan. In fact, as Prime Minister, Nikol turned out to be more separatist than Presidents Kocharyan and Sargsyan. After he became a deputy of the National Assembly of Armenia, he broke off acquaintance with Gergiy Vanyan, the supporter of the idea of the return of Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan, with whom he shared his ideology in the nineties," said political scientist E. Shainoglu, who first in Azerbaijan gave this assessment to Nikol Pashinyan. He expressed dissatisfaction with the work of the entire OSCE Minsk Group, especially the permanent personal representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk.

Another delay in the negotiation process can become the implementation of Pashinyan"s proposal to explain him the details of the implementation of the Madrid principles by the OSCE MG. The negotiation process will get stuck in the explanations, and the idea of ​​ "peace in exchange for territory" is not accepted by Pashinyan in principle, Shainoglu said.

Pashinyan is afraid to discuss with President Ilham Aliyev the Karabakh problem; he twice avoided to discuss it at the meetings in Dushanbe and Davos. He reported on the refusal to conduct a conversation with I. Aliyev, posting tweets on the Internet.

Political analyst is displeased with the passivity of the Karabakh Azeri community and the new community leader of the diplomat Tural Ganjaliyev. He is not as initiative as the head of the illegal Karabakh regime, Bako Sahakyan, who toured the capitals of the three countries - the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, in which, of course, exclusively Armenian proposals were discussed. "Ganjaliyev, together with a delegation of Karabakh Azerbaijanis (7-8 people) should visit the capitals of the states of importance in the Karabakh process and attract the governments of our countries. Pashinyan does not want to take responsibility for the Karabakh problem and doesn"t even want to solve it. Which states could it be? The United States, starting with Obama and especially under Trump, retired from the Karabakh process. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan support Azerbaijan. Iran pretends to be a champion of the rights of the Karabakh Shiites, but it trades with Armenia. Russia continues to use the Karabakh problem as a hook to keep Azerbaijan in suspended state, and does not allow Turkey to intervene in the settlement. When Erdogan raised in the conversation with Putin the topic of the need to solve the problem, Putin said that the Karabakh knot is "very difficult"; he made it clear that Russia does not intend to solve the issue. And realizing that this year Azerbaijan did not buy the Russian weapons, Moscow began to put pressure on our country, raising the issue of a ban on Russian Armenians visiting Azerbaijan, the political scientist listed. Shahinoglu called illegal and dangerous for our country Moscow"s demand to allow Armenian citizens to cross the Azerbaijani border, recalling that Azerbaijanis who are citizens of the Russian Federation, don"t fly to Armenia."

E. Shainoglu does not consider the recent statements of Armenian Defense Minister Tonoyan about the readiness of his army to move from defensive to offensive doctrine, does not call it a new page of Armenian Karabakh rhetoric. "Another predecessor of Tonoyan promised to strike at the Mingachevir hydroelectric station in the event of active hostilities from the Azerbaijani side," said Shainoglu.

Speaking about a possible war, the political scientist expressed doubt that if the Azerbaijani army returns some territories, even large ones, during the fighting, this will force Yerevan to sign a peace treaty that suits Azerbaijan. As is known, the local victory in the hostilities of April 2016, and the movement of our army in the Nakhchivan sector in 2018, did not give anything to Azerbaijan, except for territorial acquisitions. Russia remains a factor of instability in the Caucasus, it protects the Armenian aggressor and does not allow Azerbaijan to liberate its lands, or carry out an antiterrorist operation. Moscow is categorically against large-scale hostilities in Karabakh, and it was illustrated during the April 2016 events.

Last year, Minister of Defense Zakir Hasanov reported on how Russian Defense Minister S. Shoigu called him on the last day of hostilities and asked him to cease fire. "We didn"t know how this dialogue really was - requested or demanded, but Russia stood up for Armenia," the political scientist added.

As a result of April (2016) events, the Armenian side was occupied only by Russia, and in May of last year, when Azerbaijan moved troops in Nakhchivan, bringing it closer to Armenia, not a single country stood up for Yerevan, Shainoglu drew attention.

The CSTO cannot be a defender of the expansionist aspirations of Armenians, since this organization is divided into Turkic states on the one hand, Armenia and Russia on the other. And the fifth member of the CSTO - Belarus, takes a pro-Azerbaijani position. Armenians are trying to provoke the CSTO to protect the territorial integrity of their country, provoking a war with Azerbaijan in the Tovuz-Gazakh direction, but they do not succeed, concluded E. Shainoglu.

Returning to the possibility of new fighting, he, did not rule out any day as the first in the new war, recalling that "April 2016" began when I. Aliyev was on a trip to the USA. In the summer of 2019, Shahinoglu predicts socio-economic tensions in Armenia, the people of which will tire of waiting for the implementation of Pashinian's promises. This will be a convenient time for the next local military operation, the political analyst believes.

E. Shainoglu believes that the efficiency of the activity of the state-created analytical centers, which are obliged to provide President I. Aliyev with competent analytical information about the Karabakh and other processes, is insufficient. According to the political scientist, the two created Centers will continue the unsuccessful work of the Center for Strategic Studies under the President of Azerbaijan, which was closed by the President, who did not want to cooperate with independent political scientists, and in the end turned into a place of inactivity of officials.