Armenia's Prime Minister Warns of High Escalation Possibility in Nagorno-Karabakh

Today Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held a press conference with certain media outlets where he highlighted Azerbaijan’s continued aggressive rhetoric and policy and noted that it has increased before and after the 2020 war.

“Now the possibility of escalation is very high both along the border of Armenia and in Nagorno-Karabakh (NK). My conclusion is based on Azerbaijan’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric, and, of course, there is certain other data,” Pashinyan said.

The PM also referred to the mechanisms of restraint.

“We are convinced and know 100% that it isn’t Armenia that initiates aggressive actions and escalation. This is the reason why Armenia decided to invite EU observers.

Before and after 2020, Azerbaijan explained any escalation by the actions of Armenia. We, realizing that we also receive such questions from our EU partners. We said we don’t mind if you send observers so that you don’t have to judge based on our and Azerbaijan’s information .

The initial agreement in Prague in October 2022 was that there would be EU observers on both sides of the contact line. Moreover, the President of Azerbaijan agreed in the presence of the President of France and the President of the Council of the European Union, but later refused that option.

Various topics were touched upon, while Azerbaijan accused us of having armed forces or an army in NK. I said that we do not have an army in NK, as we have stated. When the president of Azerbaijan said that you have, I said: very well, I think this debate has no end, we can do the following: invite international observers to NK, let them assess the situation on the spot and come up with a report. That would be the solution to that issue. Azerbaijan rejected this option.

Now I think the international community should note that the risk of a new escalation is very high. Considering the closure of Lachin Corridor and the existence of a humanitarian crisis in NK, as well as Azerbaijan’s obvious preparations to carry out ethnic cleansing, our position continues to be that it would be very appropriate to send an international fact-finding mission to Lachin Corridor and NK,” he said.