“In accordance with the trilateral statement of November 9, 2020, the Lachin corridor belongs to Russia, Russian peacekeepers are deployed there,” Grigoryan announced on Armenian Public Television. To a follow-up question from the press, “Belongs to or is being controlled by?”, Grigoryan responded without a shadow of doubt: “Belongs to.” Then he elaborated: “By the statement of November 9 the entirety of the Lachin corridor was given to Russia, and Russia is responsible for everything that is going on there. And Russia should act so that the 120,000 Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh are not subjected to ethnic cleansing. If things are not resolved through negotiations, then action must follow.”
For starters, we are compelled to remind Mr. Grigoryan that there are not “120,000 Armenians” in Karabakh. There were not as many even before the 44-day war, let alone today. More importantly, Lachin District is an integral part of the territory of Azerbaijan. The temporary deployment of the Russian peacekeepers there does not make it a Russian territory. Is Mr. Grigoryan not aware of this? Or is he sending Russia a transparent “message”: “You rip Lachin District from Azerbaijan, and we will accept that it belongs to Russia, not to Armenia”?
This, of course, is curious, thought-provoking information about the real level of pro-Western sentiments in Pashinyan’s team. Especially since Armen Grigoryan is one of the prominent representatives of the “Soros” camp in Yerevan. He may have thought the “idea” to give Russia a gift in the form of Lachin District was clever and failsafe. But this character seems to have forgotten for a moment about the recognized borders and military realities. Pashinyan’s team may give Russia, say, Gyumri, home to a Russian military base, Meghri, where Russian border guards protect the border with Iran, or even all of Armenia, where Russia controls everything that makes sense to control, but not the territory of Azerbaijan in general and not Lachin District in particular.
Especially now that there is an Azerbaijani border checkpoint set up there.
