December 17, 2020
City of Kapan in Armenia’s Syunik Province
Kapan Mayor Gevorg Parsyan was informed on Thursday that all military positions in the city, which is in Armenia’s Syunik Province, must be surrendered to Azerbaijani forces by 5 p.m. Friday, news.am reported.
“The Defense Ministry has issued an order to surrender to the enemy, by 5 p.m. [local time] tomorrow, all the positions we held for the defense of Kapan,” Parsyan said, adding that this will make the entire city defenseless.
Parsyan explained that with this retreat or surrender the security zone around the city of Kapan will disappear and that “the enemy will be one kilometer from our residential zone, and 200 to 300 meters from the airport. Our rural roads will be blocked. This is an ugly situation.”
The Kapan mayor 10 village will be impacted by the new mandate, among them the Akarag, Yeghvart, Khndrants, Oujanis, Jakaten, Shikahogh, Srashen, Nerkin Hand, Tzav, Shikert villages, the latter six of which will have no other transportation routes.
He said that he had been raising the alarm about this since the November 9 agreement, which ended the war, but has called into question Armenia’s territorial integrity and saw the surrender of Artsakh territories to Azerbaijan.
“I have been saying that if such a situation occurs where we are returning to Soviet era boundaries, Kapan will be rendered defenseless,” explained Parsyan, who said that if there were any discussions about this, he was not included in them.
He said that he was informed of the possibility of Russian guards being stationed along the border, whose main task would have been to ensure the safety of the roads leading to the city.
Armenia’s Defense Minister Vagharshak Harutyunyan was visiting the Syunik Province, but had not visited Kapan at the time of Parsyan’s statements.
Local residents blocked Kapan roads in protest of the imminent handover of positions.
Parsyan and the residents are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.