President Vahagn Khachaturyan gave an interview to the Italian “la Repubblica” newspaper

President Vahagn Khachaturyan gave an interview to the Italian “la Repubblica” newspaper.

During the interview, he touched upon the problems and the general situation in the South Caucasus. Vahagn Khachaturyan presented details on the content of the Nagorno Karabakh issue and the beginning of the Karabakh movement.

In his speech, the President noted: “The situation 30 years ago was the same as it is today, the existence of the Armenians is in danger. There wouldn’t be war, were there not the Sumgait pogrom in 1988 and the Baku pogrom in 1990, which were organized by the authorities of Soviet Azerbaijan. As a result, there are no Armenians living in either Sumgait or Baku today.

Today, Azerbaijan’s policy is the same. It wants to cleanse Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh. Their government proclaims that the issue of Nagorno Karabakh doesn’t exist for them anymore, for it was solved in 2020, during the 44-day war, despite the fact that 120 thousand of our compatriots still live in that region today. Baku claims that they must live in accordance with the Azerbaijani law, otherwise, they must leave. They know very well that no Armenian will ever want to live in such Azerbaijan, where human rights are violated, democratic values are neglected and, apart from that, they are in constant danger as Armenians. In spite of our readiness to sign a peace agreement and mutually recognise the territorial integrity, Azerbaijan continues its aggressive position.”

Answering the questions of the journalist regarding the blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the President highlighted that on December 12, 2022, the Azerbaijani faux environmental activists blocked the Humanitarian Corridor of Lachin under completely false pretexts, creating a threat of a humanitarian crisis for 120,000 residents of Nagorno Karabakh due to lack of food, medicines, electricity and gas, due to constant outages.

Speaking of the regional issues, Vahagn Khachaturyan highlighted that Armenia completely adheres to its position of achieving sustainable and everlasting peace in the region and establishing good relations with our neighboring countries. “We want to have good relations with our neighboring countries, and for that reason, our government has chosen the path of normalizing relations with Turkey. I am glad that after all these years, we have restarted our dialogue with Ankara. We need to look into the future and see what region we want to leave to our children. We need to aspire for regional balance and peace, not war.”