YEREVAN — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan outlined a new vision for peace with Azerbaijan on Wednesday, proposing territorial exchanges, the reopening of regional transport links and the mutual abandonment of historical and territorial claims. The announcement was the latest step in his government’s effort to present normalization with Baku as the foundation of Armenia’s long-term security and sovereignty.
The vision was expansive. Armenia and Azerbaijan would complete the delimitation of their borders, eliminate enclaves through exchanges of equivalent territories and establish reciprocal transport connections. Disputes that have dominated bilateral relations for decades would give way to a framework of coexistence based on internationally recognized boundaries.
Pashinyan said recent discussions with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev had given him preliminary grounds to believe such an arrangement was achievable.
The peace agreement initialed in Washington in August 2025 has yet to be formally signed or ratified. Azerbaijan continues to demand amendments to Armenia’s Constitution as a prerequisite for concluding the treaty, while critical questions concerning border security, territorial arrangements and the rights of Armenians displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh remain unsettled.
These unresolved issues have taken on renewed urgency following an armed attack on an Armenian family in Syunik, where a mother suffered devastating injuries protecting her children from an Azerbaijani serviceman who had crossed the border.
The attack in Shaki: A warning that never reached the family
On Oct. 1, 39-year-old Ani Avetisyan rushed from Sisian to her home in the village of Shaki, in southern Armenia’s Syunik province. An armed stranger had entered the property, where her two children were alone.
According to her account to Azatutyun, the intruder had held the children at gunpoint for approximately 15 minutes before she arrived.
The man fired at her as she approached. One shot missed. When he subsequently aimed his assault rifle at her son, Avetisyan grabbed the weapon to redirect it. The resulting gunfire severed her left thumb and seriously damaged her other fingers.
Despite her injuries, she continued resisting with a knife. The attacker allegedly threw her onto a bed and struck her. When he aimed the rifle toward her chest, Avetisyan pushed the weapon downward, and another shot struck her leg.
Even after she fell, the man attempted to reload before eventually fleeing.
The attacker was later identified as Nasimi Musayev, an Azerbaijani serviceman who had left his military post and crossed into Armenia.
Avetisyan said he remained silent throughout the confrontation. She had no idea he was Azerbaijani.
Speaking from a Yerevan hospital, where she faces three further operations, she said she believed her intervention had prevented the deaths of her children and herself.
According to Armenia’s National Security Service, Azerbaijani authorities notified their Armenian counterparts on Sept. 29 that a serviceman had abandoned his post and might have crossed the border.
Musayev was apprehended on Oct. 1.
During those two days, Avetisyan said, residents were not warned about the potentially armed individual in the area. She told Azatutyun that she would not have sent her children to school or remained in Shaki had she known.
The notification from Azerbaijan did not establish Musayev’s precise location or intentions. Nevertheless, it meant Armenian authorities had advance information about a possible security threat.
The prime minister’s response and a disputed police timeline
The public controversy deepened following Pashinyan’s remarks in parliament on Oct. 7.
The prime minister characterized the shooting as an ordinary criminal incident, arguing that it should not be interpreted as evidence of renewed interstate hostilities.
He also questioned Avetisyan’s decision to confront the intruder rather than wait for police officers.
“I understand that maternal instinct is strong, but when you call the police, you have to wait for the police to act,” he said. The statement drew attention because Avetisyan’s account described a situation in which she believed her children faced an immediate threat to their lives.
Avetisyan maintains that she contacted police before leaving for Shaki but reached the house before officers arrived. She said her aunt arrived after the attack, followed approximately five minutes later by police.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs disputes the suggestion of a delayed response.
On Oct. 13, ministry spokesperson Narek Sargsyan said Avetisyan called the community police officer responsible for Shaki at 2:05 p.m. on Oct. 1.
Although the officer was off duty and resting at his home in Sisian, the ministry maintains that he reached the property in less than 10 minutes.
Other police teams also arrived, officials said, before a subsequent notification was registered through the 112 emergency response center.
Constitutional reform and Azerbaijan’s outstanding demand
The Shaki controversy has unfolded alongside another significant development in Armenia’s relationship with Azerbaijan.
On Oct. 13, the ruling Civil Contract party’s executive board, chaired by Pashinyan, discussed matters related to the draft of a new Armenian Constitution. The meeting was confirmed publicly by the party.
The following morning, Joghovurd reported, citing unnamed ruling-party sources, that Justice Minister Srbuhi Galyan had briefed officials on the draft’s provisions and the remaining steps before publication. The reported details of her participation have not been independently established.
The constitutional initiative predates this week’s meeting. In March, Galyan said a draft had already been prepared and would undergo further discussion within the governing party before being released.
The proposed reforms include changes to institutional oversight and judicial procedures. Their precise implications cannot be assessed until the complete text becomes public.
Of particular political importance is whether the new Constitution will retain its reference to Armenia’s 1990 Declaration of Independence. Azerbaijan has repeatedly demanded the removal of that reference. Pashinyan has publicly supported excluding the reference from the new Constitution while insisting that the initiative reflects Armenia’s domestic political priorities rather than external pressure.
The opposition’s challenge: What has Armenia conceded in the name of peace?
For Armenia’s opposition, the central question is what Armenia has surrendered in pursuit of peace, what it has received in return and whether the process has produced the security guarantees repeatedly promised by the government.
The criticism intensified following an Oct. 7 parliamentary exchange in which Pashinyan challenged opposition lawmakers to identify what his government had conceded to Azerbaijan.
Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Armenia Supreme Body chairman and lawmaker Ishkhan Saghatelyan responded with an extensive account of territorial withdrawals, military setbacks, diplomatic commitments and political decisions undertaken since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.
The most consequential diplomatic developments followed in Prague in October 2022 and Granada in October 2023. Pashinyan’s recognition of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, encompassing Nagorno-Karabakh, forms a central element of Saghatelyan’s criticism.
The opposition figure argues that Armenia accepted this position without first obtaining sufficient guarantees concerning the security and rights of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population. Pashinyan’s government maintains that recognizing territorial integrity is necessary to secure Armenia’s sovereignty within its internationally recognized boundaries.
Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive ultimately brought the territory under Baku’s control and prompted the displacement of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians.
Saghatelyan accuses the Armenian government of abandoning responsibility for protecting the population during the offensive and of subsequently removing the rights and return of displaced Armenians from the negotiating agenda.
Border demarcation, detainees and the cumulative cost of compromise
Saghatelyan’s account also addresses the 2024 border-delimitation process in Tavush.
Under arrangements negotiated with Azerbaijan, Armenian forces withdrew from positions associated with four formerly Azerbaijani villages.
Saghatelyan also raises the issue of Azerbaijani servicemen previously detained inside Armenian territory. He cites the Feb. 28, 2024, return of Azerbaijani serviceman Ruslan Penakhov, who had crossed near Tegh, without a corresponding prisoner exchange. He further criticizes the return of two Azerbaijani servicemen who had entered Armenia in 2023, one of whom had been convicted in connection with the killing of an Armenian civilian near Kapan.
For the opposition, these cases raise questions about whether the government has used its available leverage effectively to secure the release of Armenians detained in Azerbaijan.
The issue remains particularly sensitive given the continued detention of Armenian prisoners and former Nagorno-Karabakh officials in Baku.
Saghatelyan also includes Armenia’s transfer of minefield records among the concessions he believes were insufficiently reciprocated. His statement refers to 972 minefield records provided to Azerbaijan on five occasions during 2021, followed by eight additional records in January 2024. He argues that the information was strategically valuable because mapping minefields substantially reduces the time and resources required for clearance.
Saghatelyan’s critique also encompasses provisions negotiated as part of the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace settlement.
He identifies Armenia’s willingness to support the dissolution of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Minsk Group as another concession to an Azerbaijani demand.
The Minsk Group served for decades as the principal international negotiating format concerning Nagorno-Karabakh. Its role became increasingly limited following the 2020 war and Azerbaijan’s establishment of control over the territory in 2023.
The opposition argues that abandoning the framework removes an international mechanism previously associated with the conflict’s political settlement.
Shaki and the opposition’s accusation of official minimization
The attack on Ani Avetisyan and her children has brought these longstanding arguments into a more immediate context.
ARF Armenia Supreme Body member and former lawmaker Garnik Danielyan accused the government of circulating explanations that, in his view, minimized the conduct of the Azerbaijani serviceman responsible for the attack.
Danielyan visited Shaki with fellow ARF Supreme Body member and opposition lawmaker Kristine Vardanyan to examine the circumstances and speak with residents.
Following the visit, he raised questions about how the armed serviceman crossed Armenia’s border, how long he remained inside the country, how he reached the village and why security operations had not located him before the attack. He also questioned whether the authorities were attempting to limit accountability to individual dismissals rather than explain the wider institutional response.
Danielyan challenged Pashinyan’s suggestion that the serviceman might have crossed the border after becoming lost, arguing that such an explanation did not address the subsequent armed confrontation inside the family’s home.
Danielyan also criticized Pashinyan’s refusal to consider exchanging the detained serviceman for Armenians held in Azerbaijan. He argued that the authorities should examine every available opportunity to secure the release of Armenian detainees.
Much like war, waging peace is a strategy. It will call for laying down strategic initiatives and mobilization. Waging peace is the strategic initiative Armenia is set to continue mobilizing all its resources. I find the Armenian authorities are properly addressing the issue of the Azerbaijani serviceman who crossed the border into Armenia and committed the criminal act.
You must believe in tooth ferries.
He obviously does. The trust that he, his idol Pashinyan, and his other followers place in Azerbaijan, resembles Stockholm syndrome or hybristophilia. Since a name for this condition does not exist, let’s call it Azerophilia.
Apparently, Armenian residents do, no hope for the future
Dear Vahe,
Hello, we know each other both from Keghart and from social media.
I read your comments with great interest. I particularly agree with your point that maintaining peace requires just as much strategy as waging war. I also appreciate your reminder that those of us living in the diaspora should never forget that it is the people living in Armenia who will bear the direct consequences of decisions about war and peace. This does not diminish the diaspora’s right to have a voice. Rather, it places a greater responsibility on all of us.
There is, however, one point I would like to discuss with you. Why should defending peace and holding the government accountable for its security policies be treated as opposing positions?
I have been researching what happened to Ani Avetisyan in Shaki. Armenian security authorities had been informed on September 29 that an Azerbaijani soldier might have crossed the border. Yet the question of why villagers were not adequately warned remains unanswered. Ani herself has said that, had she known about the danger, she would not have sent her children to school or remained in the village. I was also particularly troubled by Prime Minister Pashinyan’s suggestion that this woman, who confronted an armed intruder to protect her children, should have waited for the police.
For me, the issue is not abandoning the peace process or advocating another war. Quite the opposite. It is about what genuine, lasting peace should look like.
After the devastating losses of 2020 and 2023, it is not difficult to understand why Armenian society would want to avoid another war. But restoring people’s sense of security is just as important as preventing another military confrontation.
We can all admire Ani’s courage. But we should listen just as carefully to the questions she is asking the authorities. Peace is not simply the normalization of relations between two states. It must also mean that families living in border villages can send their children to school without fearing for their lives.
To me, that is the real question worth discussing: How do we defend peace while also defending citizens’ right to security and their right to hold the state accountable?
I just read your comment. Thank you, much appreciated. To each their own about that incident. I made mine and have no further comment. But I am ever more convinced that democracy is a messy form of governance be it in the nascent Republic of Armenia, or in the 2.5 centuries old Republic of the U.S. The promise of democracy does not reach each one of us, all the time and at all times. But democracy retains the promise to redress, individually or collectively. That may be why, Churchill is claimed to have said that democracy is the worst form of government, but there is no better.
A week ago, my wife told me that each one of us received a $100 check signed by president Donald Trump. I felt outraged and insulted to have received such a check from president Donald Trump, especially that we are in the midst of voting for the November 3, mid-term election. I know, yes, I know that the Armenian Americans would have outright enraged at PM Nikol Pashinyan, had he issued such a check, prior to election or not. Over 20 million received the check. I have yet to read reactions to the check in the Weekly.
Azeri serviceman was sacrificed and sent over the border; I don’t buy the story for a minute, now they’re going to have their way in the name of waging peace. By the way, I was born in Bolis, thus oglu in my last name, they butchered my name, was supposed to be Onnik not Annik, my middle name is Hagop.
I hope you have saved yourself and your family by leaving that doomed city and that wretched genocidal country. To live as an Armenian among people who despise Armenians, discriminate against them, shun them, and whose ancestors murdered them, is psychologically draining.
There is no guarantee that an event like the pogrom of September 6–7, 1955, or a second Armenian Genocide, will never happen there again, no matter how miniscule the Armenian community has become today because of these calamities.
This is yet another one of Pashinyan’s many failures in the name and in the sake of his one-sided fraudulent “peace treaty” fiasco which not only it never seems to materialize, and never will until his full capitulation to the enemy demands, but also one that he has recently used deceptively to instill fear in the hearts and in the minds of unsuspecting and politically ignorant and gullible population to project false legitimacy to secure victory in recent rigged elections. His entire campaign was based on fear, intimidation, and emotional manipulation of the voters. Worse than that, is his nonchalant reaction to this terrorist act by an enemy combatant against the peaceful citizens of the country he has taken an oath to defend and to protect. Displaying a deceptive behavior as usual, he is trying to act like a very measured and cool-headed politician who does not want to jump to any conclusions, i.e. presuming this enemy criminal as innocent until proven guilty, when all the facts are right in front of his eyes and in full display, while the Armenian citizens who as much as speak against him and his policies are considered guilty by default, apprehended, fired from their jobs, incarcerated, run through the mud until proven innocent. Unfortunately, we Armenians seem to have short memories sometimes because someone forgot to remind Pashinyan how in not so distant past the hate-filled racist enemy criminals would apprehend Armenian shepherds getting lost in border regions looking for their lost sheep and charge them with espionage. They would go as far as forcing them into wearing army uniforms, denigrating them in public and portraying them as Armenian terrorist infiltrators. In one case, they tortured a lost Armenian shepherd so much that he died in their prison and they falsely reported his death as suicide. These are sadistic savages that must be dealt with accordingly. You show slight vulnerability and they will exploit it to the fullest because to them Armenian lives do not matter and those who inflict maximum harm on the Armenians, in cowardly fashion in particular as we have seen and heard, are treated as their national heroes and paraded as role models for their future terrorists.
Pashinyan’s reaction and behavior to this terrorist act is truly disgusting and cowardly. Two weeks have already gone by since this horrifying and traumatizing terrorist event and he has not even made an attempt himself, or send a government official, to visit to show support and to meet with that badly wounded heroic Armenian mother in the hospital who protected and defended her children from harm by putting hers on the line and miraculously surviving a terrifying event, one which will haunt her and her children for the rest of their lives, so as to bear witness to this violent act to tell her story after that enemy terrorist fired several deadly shots clearly with the aim of killing that family. He could have put his loaded weapon down and surrender. But he did not and attempted to reload after firing the three life-altering shots badly wounding the mother. Shame on double-talking Pashinyan who is cowering in fear from the challenge, instead of stepping up and acting like a “leader” he has never been, while trivializing this event by attempting to sweep under the rug yet another anti-Armenian racist terrorist act to push through his fraudulent “era of peace” fairy tale. This was not some random accident. The enemy is testing us. It is testing our defenses, preparedness and mental state. Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results and this dysfunctional and incompetent regime has not learned anything from their many dealings with this fascist filthy enemy. Plain and simple, if you truly want peace with these terrorists you must be armed to the teeth!
Trusting a Turk is like trusting a wolf not to attack, kill and eat you. It is extremely annoying that there are so many cowardly, appeasing, delusional, unpatriotic Armenians from Pashinyan to Vahe who believe in the nonexistent “goodwill” and the not forthcoming fake “peace overtures” of genocidal Azerbaijan and Turkey. Having Azerbaijan and Turkey as Armenia’s neighbors, is like having a robber/rapist/murderer as your next door neighbor, who could trespass your home at any moment to rob, rape and/or murder you – and which Azerbaijan repeatedly does. This defeatist mindset, which has plagued Armenia and the Armenian diaspora, is the Turks’ best weapon, and they don’t even have to pull the trigger to pressure Armenia into pliancy and dependency. This cowardly, defeatist, submissive, unpatriotic lot are doing it for them. As long as Armenia is plagued by these fifth columnists and fails to get rid of them, it cannot recover to face and challenge the Turks.
Suggest an addition to your last sentence: “… and get rid of Pahinyan and his filthy supporters by whatever it takes!”
Exactly! Pashinyan is the equivalent of a large cancerous tumor and his followers the equivalent of cancer cells invading the body of Armenia. Pashinyan and his followers must be gotten rid of ASAP! Since he is a full dictator, the only way to depose him is by force; either through a coup d’état (which, given his purge of the Armenian army, is highly unlikely, if not impossible) or a popular uprising (the more likely option). The longer this cancer stays in power, the condition of Armenia will become terminal.
Re: Hagop, Steve M
Without spelling out your names and family names, and hiding in anonymity, it is impossible to communicate with ease and accept that you post responsibly.
Hagop, you may construe me believing in tooth ferries.
Steve M may attribute to me a made-up term Azoriphilia. Incidentally, Stockholm syndrome does not apply to me, I live and have lived in comfort and security. Hybristophilia, I found out, is a term used to those who are sexually attracted to those who commit serious crimes, such as sexual assault, murder, etc. How come you learned that term?
I pray Armenia signs a formal peace with Azerbaijan by June 2031, to formally live in peace at the South Caucasus crossroad.
Incidentally, both you, much like I appear to be Diasporans. Your lives and livelihoods, much like mine; as well as the lives and livelihood of your children or grandchildren, are not affected and will not be affected by Armenia’s relations with its neighbors. But surely that is not the case with the Armenians, as citizens of Armenia.
That is how I construe.
Your rebuttals.
Those from afar are often inclined to be hawkish since they aren’t bearing the burden this is better known with the Slava Ukraine brigade cheering on the war from afar.