By Lia Avagyan
Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan defends the use of Soviet-era maps in the ongoing border delimitation process with Azerbaijan, calling attempts to dismiss these maps “dangerous for Armenia.”
“Rejecting Soviet-era maps could mean rejecting our statehood and independence, as we received our independence within the borders of Soviet Armenia, and this is how the international community recognized us,” Pashinyan stated in a Facebook post. “Maintaining loyalty to our internationally recognized territory is an important security buffer for us.”
Pashinyan emphasized that if Armenia itself doesn’t precisely recognize its internationally acknowledged territory, it creates opportunities for others to challenge these boundaries, potentially citing Armenia’s own uncertainty as justification.
Addressing recent developments in the northeastern border village of Kirants, Pashinyan declared, “We haven’t surrendered any sovereign Armenian territory in Kirants. We have established our gateway, state border, and country’s threshold, and I consider this a pivotal success story. Go to Kirants and see this success with your own eyes.”
The first Armenian-Azerbaijani border delimitation occurred this spring in the northeastern region near Kirants village. While Armenia ceded more territory to Azerbaijan in most areas, except for a few positions, it did not receive in return many of the agricultural plots that were part of Soviet Armenia’s administrative territory.
Nevertheless, along the approximately 13 kilometers of delimited border and an additional 7 kilometers of undelimited border in Armenia’s northeastern section, border guards have replaced the previously confronting armed forces and combat positions.
Azerbaijan continues to delay the delimitation process in other border sections, where it has maintained control over certain territories since the early 1990s, as well as areas it occupied following the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war through several incursions into Armenia’s sovereign territory.
