The Armenian authorities want to leave Karabakh to the whim of Azerbaijan. Former PM of Armenia, chairman of the Freedom Party, and political scientist Hrant Bagratyan told this to a press conference Tuesday.
According to him, the aforesaid means that Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), in fact, will not get any autonomy.
“After a while, Baku will start demanding that the laws of Azerbaijan be extended to the whole territory of Karabakh. Yes, the Russian military will stay [in Artsakh]. But after the approval of the Azerbaijani legislation, the issue of the return of refugees will be raised. The Azerbaijanis will return to Karabakh, whereas the people of Karabakh—no. Then the Azerbaijanis will start settling in Armenia, whereas they, the Armenians, will not return to Baku and Sumgait. And so, the problem will start to deepen,” Bagratyan said.
At the same time, he did not rule out the withdrawal of the Russian peacekeeping contingent from Artsakh in case of a change of power in Russia.
“Turkey and Azerbaijan want to resolve the Karabakh issue as soon as possible. This is due to the fact that Russia’s attention is now focused on Ukraine. Besides, Russia is in a rather distorted information area in terms of Armenia. Not only some MPs of the Russian State Duma, but also representatives of the MFA, even the press secretary of the Russian president are behaving wrongly towards Armenia,” the former premier noted.
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