Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian visited the northeastern province of Tavush on May 25 to meet with residents of several border communities where a controversial demarcation process with Azerbaijan was completed earlier this month.
Pashinian insisted that despite a few infrastructural problems, which have emerged as a result of the process, the sections of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border where the demarcation has been conducted are now safer than before due to their newly acquired legitimacy.
At the same time, talking to RFE/RL after the meetings, the prime minister stressed that "not a single inch" of sovereign Armenian territory has been ceded to Azerbaijan.
“We are not drawing a new border now, but we are reproducing the de jure border that existed at the moment of the collapse of the Soviet Union,” he said, again hailing the process as a success.
“In the modern-day world, there is no more effective security guarantee than a delimitated, legitimate border…. And we are now creating for our villages and our republic in this section of the border the most reliable security guarantee that can exist in the modern world today,” the Armenian premier added.
Pashinian experienced an incident during the visit to the border region when his helicopter was forced to make an “unscheduled landing” due to bad weather.
“Everything is fine,” Pashinian wrote on Facebook. “Due to bad weather conditions, our helicopter made an unscheduled landing in Vanadzor. Now we continue our journey by car.”
The incident came less than a week after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian were killed when their helicopter crashed in poor weather near Iran’s border with Azerbaijan on May 19.
Both the United States and the European Union have hailed the border demarcation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, stressing that the deal announced by the two bitter South Caucasus rivals in April contains a reference to the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, a document by which a dozen former Soviet countries, including Armenia and Azerbaijan, pledged to recognize each other’s territorial integrity within existing administrative borders.
In the process that was formally completed on May 15, Baku regained control over four abandoned villages near the Armenian border that had been under Yerevan’s military control since the first Armenian-Azerbaijani war in the early 1990s.
Armenia and Azerbaijan announced on May 24 that their border guards were deployed at the sections where the demarcation was completed.
Armenian opposition groups have denounced what they describe as the latest “unilateral territorial concessions” to Azerbaijan. They argue that the border demarcation, which affects the infrastructure of border communities, leaves local residents more vulnerable to further possible Azerbaijani aggression.
The demarcation process in April sparked protests in Kirants, the village most affected by the process, as well as later in Yerevan.
SEE ALSO: Bagrat Galstanian: The Armenian Archbishop Taking On The GovernmentArchbishop Bagrat Galstanian, the outspoken head of the Tavush diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, has emerged as the leader of these protests in recent weeks, staging several rallies attended by tens of thousands of supporters. He has called on his supporters to rally in Yerevan again on May 26 to push for Pashinian’s resignation.
Pashinian and members of his political team dismiss the opposition’s criticism, rejecting the resignation demand.
Unlike the three other border sections, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed on a transitional border protection scheme for the section of the village of Kirants where part of the road and some houses and land are to be handed over to Azerbaijan.
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Border Village Residents Challenge Armenian PM Over Demarcation With Azerbaijan
The scheme will be in place until July 24, when Armenia hopes to build a new section of the road that will provide the village with connectivity with the rest of Armenia without having to use the road section that will be controlled by Azerbaijan.
The Pashinian government has also pledged to provide compensation to people who are losing their land and property as a result of the demarcation.
“We will do everything so that the rights of our citizens will be maximally preserved and protected,” the Armenian prime minister told RFE/RL on May 25.
Most of the residents of Kirants who are losing property in the border demarcation said this week that they would reject the compensation.
Some of them challenged Pashinian over the demarcation process when he visited the village.
One resident, whose father’s grave is apparently in the territory that will now be controlled by Azerbaijan, rebuked Pashinian for the land concession.
“You are giving away my homeland and you are giving my father’s grave together with it,” he said.
Stressing again that “not an inch of sovereign Armenian territory has been handed over to Azerbaijan in the process,” Pashinian replied: “Brother, the homeland begins where the state border begins. Period.”