Pashinyan on the 4 villages of Tavush, border demarcation, legitimate borders and military service

“It means that we are not creating a new border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but we are reproducing the borders that had de jure legal significance at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union based on the Alma-Ata Declaration. Now it is very important that we also show our loyalty to that process in practice. Of course, it is important that Azerbaijan also shows this.

A very important cornerstone for the development of Armenia’s sovereignty and independence is being laid, and I think this is a very important process, a very important development. I do not want to say loud things, but this is a cornerstone for Armenia’s independence, sovereignty, security and further development, and for the long-term existence of our state,” Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview with Public TV on May 1.

He noted that if in the coming years “we manage to preserve our statehood, sovereignty and independence, we will be able to guarantee that the independent state of Armenia will exist in the coming decades.”

Speaking about the 4 villages of Tavush region, Nikol Pashinyan said that they were never part of Armenia’s Tavush region.

“We did not have such settlements, and according to the logic of the Alma-Ata Declaration, they were part of Soviet Azerbaijan.

The legitimacy of our positions is based on the agreements reached by us, because our positions are legitimate here,” he said.

According to Nikol Pashinyan, the protection of the border in the demarcated areas will be handed over to the border guard troops.

“The Ministry of Defense will not carry out border protection service in the demarcated sections. The border protection will be fully implemented by the border guard troops of the National Security Service, because the mandate of the border guard troops is to protect the border of Armenia.

And this is an important circumstance, because what does a soldier have to do standing at the border? One of the biggest problems in our army is that our soldiers spend most of their service in the trenches, meaning they do not even get to train properly as soldiers. This is illogical. A soldier should be at a permanent location, he should be mobile, and when there is a security problem, he should go and solve that problem and return to the military unit.”