South Front

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan led Armenian forces to collapse in the Nagorno-Karabakh war and lost Shusha because he was refusing to accept Russian peacekeepers and allow displaced Azerbaijani citizens to return. This was revealed by Russian President Vladimir Putin during answers to media questions on November 17.

“On October 19-20, I had a series of telephone conversations with both President Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinyan. And then the Azerbaijani armed forces regained control over an insignificant southern part of Karabakh. In general, I managed to convince President Aliyev that it is needed to stop hostilities, but a mandatory condition on his part was the return of refugees, including to the city of Shusha,” Putin said. The proposed peace agreement supposed to allow Armenian forces to maintain control over their side of the contact line, including Shusha, and to allow the return of civilians under the supervision of Russian peacekeepers. However the Pashinyan government said that it was “unacceptable” for them because this move would supposedly threaten Armenian interests. In the ensuing weeks after the refusal to accept the Russian peacekeepers deployment, Armenian forces retreated from a large number of areas in southern and central Karabakh, lost the symbolic town of Shusha and in the end accepted a much worse peace deal. After total defeat in the war with Azerbaijan, it was obliged to surrender the districts of Lachin, Kalbajar and Agdam. Shusha is in the hands of Azerbaijani troops. Thousands of Armenians were killed. These are the costs of the actions of the Soros-grown Pashinyan clique that was obsessed with pleasing its western puppeteers by distancing from Russia rather than defending Armenians.

As to the current status of Nagorno-Karabakh, it has not been settled and, according to Putin, the sides agreed to “maintain the status quo”. A “significant factor” that played a role in the Second Karabakh War and now influences the potential settlement process is that Armenia itself has neither recognized Karabakh as an independent state nor as a part of Armenia.

“To put it bluntly, after the former Georgian leaders’ undoubtedly criminal moves, I mean the attacks against our peacekeepers in South Ossetia, Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. We recognized the expression of the will of the people living in Crimea to reunite with Russia as just, and we met the people halfway, we did so openly. Some people may like it, others may not like it, but we did it in the interests of the people who live there and in the interests of Russia, and we are not ashamed to speak about it openly.

This did not happen with Karabakh, and this, of course, has significantly influenced the developments there,“ Putin noted.

Meanwhile, the Armenian prime minister and his circle continue crying foul blaming previous governments, the Armed Forces and even the Armenian nation in general for the loss of the war. Armenia has become another sad example of how color revolutions and the seizure of power by pro-globalist grant-suckers eventually lead to the destruction of statehood and major territorial or economic losses for the countries where this happens.