Russian newspaper: Pashinyan lashed out and immediately faced Baku's iron fist

Azerbaijan is in various ways forcing Armenia to come to terms with the new realities of the region, in which Yerevan is assigned the role of an economic satellite and an element of the transport infrastructure of the Baku-Ankara alliance, reads an article of the Russian newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets,” Report informs.

Analyzing the escalation on certain sections of the Azerbaijan-Armenia state border on November 16, the author notes that President Ilham Aliyev, who now has a multifold military advantage, didn’t plan to start new protracted hostilities with his defeated enemy. “What happened there was just an educational step to warn Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.”

As noted in the article, the Armenian leader understood such a transparent ‘hint’ very well: “The Armenian defense minister, who irritated Baku by visiting Nagorno-Karabakh, was sacked immediately. Pashinyan himself, who recently refused another round of negotiations with Ilham Aliyev mediated by Putin, sanctioned the resumption of dialogue with Azerbaijan - albeit at a lower level of secretaries of security councils of the two countries.”

The article reads that speaking at the UN Security Council, Permanent Representative of Azerbaijan to the UN Yashar Aliyev said that the goal of Baku is ‘reconciliation and peaceful coexistence’ with Armenia, and that ‘there is no alternative to normalizing relations between the two countries.’ “Baku really wants ‘normalization’ with Armenia. Everything depends only on the specific conditions of this ‘normalization,” the author notes.

“Azerbaijan acts according to the ‘Woe to the Vanquished’ principle and in various ways forces Armenia to come to terms with the new realities of the region, in which Yerevan is assigned the role of an economic satellite and an element of the transport infrastructure of the Baku-Ankara alliance. Agreeing in theory with what de facto means surrender, in practice, Prime Minister Pashinyan periodically lashes out. He did this now and immediately faced an armored fist of Baku.

Will Pashinyan learn anything? Not sure. The Armenian prime minister is, in a sense, a completely unique politician. What he does on the domestic front is like magic. I expected his fall as a result of the lost war. That didn’t happen. I expected him to lose the parliamentary elections. Again, it didn’t happen, and serious attempts by the opposition not to recognize his victory also failed.

"However, in foreign policy, Pashinyan is a walking disaster,” the author of the article notes.

He goes on to say that having rejected the planned video summit with Ilham Aliyev and Vladimir Putin this month, the Armenian prime minister again took a bold stand - and again achieved a similar result: “The Azerbaijani president is playing cat and mouse with his Armenian counterpart. Depending on the development of the situation, the suffocating grip either intensifies or eases.”

“Azerbaijani president's behavior towards Russia is firm but respectful. In contrast, Pashinyan and his team rush around all the time. Yerevan, in hysterical tones, calls Moscow for help, then arrogantly declares that besides Russia there are other countries willing to help Armenia, for example, the Western ones. As a result, Ilham Aliyev constantly wins,” the author of the article added.