23:59, 25 October 2023

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 25, ARMENPRESS. The Republic of Armenia can be peaceful if our region is peaceful. That's why Armenia does not oppose its ideas of peace in any way to the regional interests of peace and does not separate them from them. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this in an interview with Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov.

Answering the correspondent’s following question: “The international environment has obviously changed in the last three years and in the war in Ukraine, Russia and the USA, together with its allies, are at opposite sides. In your opinion, how did Russia's invasion of Ukraine impact Armenia's security environment?” Nikol Pashinyan expressed his belief  that all the events taking place are interconnected by internal connections, including the 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.

“ Of course those impacts are very direct and now in the modern world they are felt, visible and significant even thousands of kilometers away, but the events you mention are happening in our region, near our transport routes, or on our transport routes.

But also our reaction to the events is that our region needs peace, and we consider it important to pursue this policy consistently, because you see, there is a very important nuance that I mentioned again in my speech in the European Parliament, which sometimes can remain unnoticed, unrecorded. When we say that we have a peace agenda, the Republic of Armenia can be peaceful if our region is peaceful, there cannot be such a situation that our region is not peaceful, but the Republic of Armenia is peaceful. And for that reason, we do not oppose or separate our ideas of peace from the regional interests of peace in any way. And this is a very important wording, a very important feature that I would like to emphasize,’’ Pashinyan noted.

“If we look at the history of relations between the Armenian people and Russia over the centuries, this tension that we see now, I would not call it break necessarily, but maybe for many people the feeling of being betrayed, how historical is this tension?” asked Trofimov.

You know, if you emphasize the historical context, in that historical context I would not so much emphasize the relations between Armenia, the Armenian people and Russia, as I would emphasize the relations between Armenia and Turkey or between Armenia and the Turkish-speaking peoples of the region, or rather, Armenia's relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan. Here are all the questions and here are the answers to all the questions. And I bring forward this logic that we should work, first of all, to improve our relations in our region, with whom we have good relations, to make those relations better. We are talking about Georgia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. And with countries, with which we have strained relations or no relations at all,  we should create these relations and try to move forward step by step.

It is a very important circumstance and, frankly speaking, I do not have the answer to that question and I am trying to find the answer to the question what Armenia should do. It is very important to what extent we will be able to formulate regional interests, moreover, in this context, we can understand regional interests a little narrower and a little wider, in the context of the South Caucasus and in a wider context.

Much depends on to what extent we will be able to formulate regional interests, because when there are no formulated regional interests, tensions begin to arise between the interests of sovereign countries, which, if not managed, turn into escalations and wars. But the correct and competent way to manage these tensions is to have an understanding of regional interests, because you know, we cannot make all the countries and peoples of the region to be identical, with identical thinking, identical ideas, perceptions and so on, and there is no need to do that, because what becomes a cause of contradictions can sometimes become a cause of complementarity, not to mention that these cultures, histories, traditions can complement each other.

But it is necessary to find that formula of how to formulate and arrange them so that they do not collide, but complement one another.

In other words, it’s not so that we have defined the task but we cannot solve it, we just have not defined the task, that is, we still do not have the title. Now I think we should have that title and try to create content under that title. 

I cannot boast of the fact that we are doing this work in the region to a sufficient extent, but I think that if we stay within the framework of those agreements that are already known and about which I have spoken, the chances that something similar will happen will increase,'' the Prime Minister said.