“Here again we are dealing with agreements and verbal arrangements reached behind the people’s back, and the deadline [for the evacuation of villages] revealed to the public is just another evidence of this,” the Armenian parliament’s opposition Hayastan faction said in a statement.
After the latest escalation of violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone on August 1-3 in which at least two Armenian and one Azerbaijani soldiers were killed authorities in the Armenian-populated region revealed arrangements made with Azerbaijan through Russian peacekeepers that Armenian residents of several settlements along the current Lachin corridor, including the town of Lachin and the village of Aghavno, will be required to leave their homes for good until August 25.
The five-kilometer-wide corridor became Nagorno-Karabakh’s sole overland link to Armenia following the 2020 war. Armenian forces pulled out of the rest of the wider Lachin district under the terms of the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the six-week hostilities.
The truce accord calls for the construction of a new Armenia-Karabakh highway that will bypass the town of Lachin and two Armenian-populated villages located within the current corridor protected by Russian peacekeeping troops.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership revealed early last week that Azerbaijan had demanded through the peacekeepers the quick closure of the existing corridor and suggested that the Armenian side use a bypass road which has yet to be constructed.
Armenia’s government dismissed the demands as “not legitimate” amid renewed deadly fighting along the corridor in which Azerbaijan claimed to have captured several strategic heights. The Armenian side has not confirmed the loss of such heights yet.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian argued during a cabinet session on August 4 that the truce accord requires Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia to work out before 2024 a joint “plan” for the construction of a new Armenia-Karabakh road. No such plan has been drawn up yet, he said.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said, however, that the three sides did agree on the “route” of the new corridor early this year and accused Yerevan of dragging out work on its Armenian sections.
In its latest statement the opposition Hayastan parliamentary faction accused the current Armenian authorities of “serving the Turkish-Azerbaijani interests” in implementing a plan for the “exodus of Armenians” from Nagorno-Karabakh together with Ankara and Baku.
Hayastan, a bloc whose leader outside of parliament is former President Robert Kocharian, a top Pashinian critic, called for “nationwide consolidation”, stressing that “stopping the spinning wheel of defeats is possible only by removing the current authorities.”
Hayastan lawmaker Gegham Manukian claimed that the Pashinian government “consistently fulfills the points of the trilateral statement of November 9, 2020 that are beneficial to Azerbaijan, while not taking any steps towards the release of Armenian prisoners of war mentioned in the same document.”
“The authorities of Armenia have washed their hands of the Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh – ed.] Republic, the Artsakh Armenians and Artsakh’s security. Even though under the government program presented to the National Assembly in 2021 as well as the election program of the [Pashinian-led] Civil Contract party the guarantor of the security of Artsakh Armenians is the Republic of Armenia, today Armenia is trying to completely put itself aside and leave Artsakh and Artsakh Armenians alone in this process,” Manukian said.
Vahagn Aleksanian, a member of the ruling Civil Contract faction, dismissed Hayastan’s criticism, claiming that instead of criticizing Azerbaijan, the opposition faction “extends the Azerbaijani aggression to the Armenian political and media domains.”
“First, I am very surprised that the Hayastan faction has finally decided to speak about the existence of the Lachin corridor and the Azerbaijani aggression there, because I had the impression that they did not want to talk about it. It was especially surprising, considering the fact that the Lachin corridor, under the terms of the 2020 ceasefire, is under absolute control of Russian peacekeepers. The Hayastan faction, for some reason, did not talk about that,” Aleksanian said.
“But generally the same pattern appears to be working with Azerbaijan and the Hayastan faction. Azerbaijan commits some kind of provocation, aggression, violates agreements, and after that the Hayastan faction, in its own style, starts accusing the Armenian authorities over the matter,” the pro-government lawmaker added.