ArmInfo. The accents put at Armenian Premier Nikol Pashinyan's last news conference in the context of the last signals in negotiations with Azerbaijan and settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict suggest planned further concessions to Azerbaijan rather than an imminent war, political engineer Vigen Hakobyan said in an interview with ArmInfo.
Commenting on Baku's accusations against Yerevan that Armenia is unwilling to start negotiations, Mr Pashinyan stated that Azerbaijan is thus trying to legalize a new war, whereas Azerbaijan is deliberately delaying the unblocking of regional transport links.
The Armenian premier's statements are, in fact, his desire to justify the planned further concessions to Azerbaijan. In other words, Pashinyan is suggesting that a new war is the only alternative to territorial concessions or concessions on Artsakh, Mr Hakobyan said.
In fact, however, there is no insidious threat of resumed hostilities now. And a permanent threat of a new war over the unsettled Artsakh conflict does not at all justify the Armenian premier's intention to prepare Armenian society for new concessions. The expert does not rule out local skirmishes, without seeing any conditions for a new full-scale war, including due to the fact of Yerevan not opposing the Baku-exerted pressure, which could have been a casus belli.
"We realize that no war breaks out at the warring sides' pleasure. Rather, a number of geopolitical, international and economic factors account for wars, with the factors themselves often having nothing in common with the warring sides. In this context, it is clear that a new war in the Transcaucasus requires consensus among different centers of power, which cannot be reached amid the ongoing Ukraine conflict," Mr Hakobyan said.
In other words, the reason for the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations losing momentum now is not Yerevan's opposition. Rather, it is the global or regional actors' positions, which, in turn, are the result of the ongoing confrontation between their interests in Ukraine. And, of course, it has its, Mr Hakobyan influence on their positions in the Yerevan-Baku negotiations said.