“Armenia is playing a very dangerous game by simultaneously backtracking from the commitments it agreed to under Russia’s mediation in November 2020, distancing itself from its CSTO ally, and reaching out to the West. All responsible stakeholders must do their utmost to convince Pashinyan that he’s playing Russian roulette with a practically full chamber,” US expert and PhD in political science Andrew Korybko, who lives in Moscow, told Report.
According to him, this is all part of some gamble to coerce concessions from Azerbaijan: “The only reasonable explanation for these moves is that it’s either planning to abandon the peace process entirely after possibly clinching security guarantees from countries like France, even if they’re only informal ones, or this is all part of some gamble to coerce concessions from Azerbaijan. In any case, it’s highly irresponsible and recklessly risks provoking another conflict.”
Korybko noted that nobody can say for sure what’s driving Yerevan, and even Pashinyan himself might not have any clear endgame in mind: “For all intents and purposes, he’s turned into a puppet of his country’s ultra-nationalist French- and US-based diaspora, who are dead-set against their homeland concluding a peace treaty with Azerbaijan.”
