The more moves Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan makes to forge peace with Azerbaijan, the more he seems at war with a significant portion of his constituents.
Pashinyan’s latest move, completing the return of four disputed border villages to Azerbaijan, has sparked ongoing protests in Armenia. The protests erupted shortly after the handover deal was finalized April 19, and show no signs of abating. The two countries framed the move as necessary to conform to a 1991 pact, known as the Alma-Ata declaration054-e), which fixed the former Soviet Union’s borders that existed at that time.
The four disputed villages – Baghanis Ayrim, Lower Askipara, Kheyrimli, and Gizilhajili – were on the Azerbaijani side of the border and occupied by Armenian forces in the early 1990s during the first Karabakh War, which concluded in 1994 after the signing of the Alma-Ata declaration.
A joint statement issued by the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministries said the two states would work to delimit the sections of the border where the four villages are situated by July. After that, work would proceed to fix the dividing line along other disputed sections of their mutual frontier. Azerbaijan had set the return of the disputed villages as a precondition for the finalization of a comprehensive peace deal. Four other patches of land, exclaves of one of the states that is surrounded by the territory of the other, remain in dispute and will be addressed at a later, unspecified date.
Since Armenia suffered a crushing defeat in the second Karabakh War, which ended with Azerbaijan’s expulsion of over 100,000 Karabakh Armenians last fall, Pashinyan has had little leverage in his negotiations with Azerbaijan. His pragmatic approach to border delimitation and a lasting peace have stoked discontent at home. Opponents contend the prime minister is giving up too much without getting anything in return.
Pashinyan has tried to pitch the handover as a historic step forward toward peace. “I wouldn’t want us to overestimate what happened, but I also wouldn’t want us to underestimate it, because it is very important to record that, in fact, for the first time, Armenia and Azerbaijan have resolved an issue around the [negotiating] table,” Pashinyan told journalists April 20. He also mentioned that Russian peacekeepers would depart from a base in Armenia’s Tavush Province once the border delimitation process was completed.
Despite Pashinyan’s efforts to put a positive spin on developments, the handover has unsettled Armenian society. Government critics in Yerevan say the handover weakens Armenian national security, by allowing Azerbaijani military forces to take up positions nearer to strategic chokepoints. Meanwhile, residents in the affected areas have mounted non-stop protests, including the blockage of a major highway. The road remained blocked on April 22. Others are disgruntled that the handover deal does not address the issue of Armenian villages occupied by Azerbaijan in northeastern TavushProvince.
Tigran Grigoryan, Yerevan-based political analyst who heads the RegionalCenter for Democracy, suggested on X that the Armenian government was being conned.
“Armenia made another unilateral concession without even agreeing with Baku on specific maps,” he wrote in one April 20 post. “The reference to the Alma-Ata declaration is there for face-saving purposes. Baku is not interested in delimitation; it has very specific goals and will continue pressing to achieve them.”
The initial response has been markedly different in Azerbaijan. State media lavished praise on Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev while residents in border areas, including Gazakh, took to the streets to celebrate the news.
“He [Aliyev] took the villages back without a war, without a single bullet, without a drop of blood. May God let him live longer,” a displaced resident of one of the four returned villages, Baghanis Ayrim, said.
Public television gave most of the credit for the handover to Aliyev. Similarly, a prominent news agency, Report.az, published an editorial that described recent developments as a “unique gift of President Ilham Aliyev to the people, who has united the lands of Azerbaijan step by step.”
