Deputies Condemn Pashinyan and Commentary by AbkhazWorld
SUKHUM / AQW'A ― Deputies of the People's Assembly - Parliament of the Republic of Abkhazia, Ashot Minosyan, Galust Trapizonyan, Erik Rshtuni, and Levon Galustyan, have issued a statement in response to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. In his recent remarks, Pashinyan expressed unwavering support for what he referred to as the unity and statehood of Georgia.
“In my public statements, I have repeatedly declared that we fully and unequivocally support the unity and statehood of Georgia,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan recently stated.
In their statement, the deputies of the Parliament of the Republic of Abkhazia said:
"Following the tragedy in Artsakh, where the current Armenian leadership doomed 120,000 of its citizens in Nagorno-Karabakh to displacement, one could have disregarded Pashinyan's latest statement. However, his thesis on supporting the territorial integrity of Georgia sounded excessively cynical.
This cynicism is not because the Republic of Abkhazia, being an independent state, has no relation to sovereign Georgia, but because just a few years ago, Yerevan loudly proclaimed that Artsakh was Armenia and would not allow any Azerbaijani encroachments on the territory of Karabakh.
Unfortunately, subsequent events showed that Armenian authorities are prone to opportunism and easily change positions, including on such a sensitive issue for all Armenians as the existence of the Artsakh state. The fact of its disappearance from the world's political map is entirely the 'merit' of official Yerevan, which has done everything to abandon the idea of building a sovereign Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Let's recall that tens of thousands of people laid down their lives for its creation."
The authors of the statement perceive Pashinyan's words as a demarche against their homeland – the Republic of Abkhazia.
Meanwhile, in a recent statement, the President of Abkhazia, Aslan Bzhania, responded to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s remarks.
President Bzhania, in his statement published on the official state website, criticised the Armenian leadership for its pro-Georgian stance, which he argues contradicts the sovereignty of Abkhazia. He highlighted Pashinyan's support for "unity, sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence, and democracy of Georgia," as fundamentally opposing Abkhazia's status as a sovereign state.
Commentary by AbkhazWorld
Quotes from Nikol Pashinyan's interview to Al Jazeera TV channel.
"Nagorno-Karabakh was handed over to Soviet Azerbaijan but not to Soviet Armenia as a result of Stalin’s arbitrary decision."
"As democratisation commenced in the Soviet Union, the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh sought to regain their rights and reunify with the Republic of Armenia but this move was met with brutal violence against by the Soviet Union and Azerbaijan against the peaceful population."
"If we adopt Azerbaijan's interpretation of international law, we should be able to say that Azerbaijan is part of the Soviet Union. But there is no such independent state anymore. If you can say that the Soviet Union does not exist, therefore, Azerbaijan cannot be part of the Soviet Union. Similarly, Soviet Azerbaijan does not exist anymore for the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, which used to be part of the now defunct Soviet Azerbaijan."
If Mr. Pashinyan, contrary to what he says, was satisfied with Stalin's Soviet borders, he should have either shut up and resigned from his position, or he should have handed over Karabakh to Azerbaijan much earlier.
As for Abkhazia, we feel obliged to give Mr. Pashinyan a brief history lesson:
In the period of 1917-1918, Abkhazia became a part of the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus. During this era, the Mensheviks, having taken control of Georgia's government, annexed Abkhazia through a blend of political tactics and military force, specifically using the 'fire and sword' approach of General Mazniashvili’s troops.
By March 1921, a significant shift occurred when the Bolsheviks ousted the Mensheviks in Georgia. This led to the establishment of the Abkhazian Soviet Socialist Republic under the leadership of Nestor Lakoba. On May 21, 1921, the Georgian Bolshevik government formally recognised Abkhazia's independence.
However, within the same year, under the pressure of Stalin (Iosif Dzhugashvili) and other influential Georgian Bolsheviks, Abkhazia was compelled to sign a union treaty (a form of confederation) with Georgia.
Despite this agreement, Abkhazia joined the Transcaucasian Federation as an EQUAL PARTNER alongside Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. It was as a member and a subject of international law within the Soviet Union that Abkhazia participated in the formation of the USSR in 1922, acting as a sovereign Abkhazian Republic.
A pivotal change occurred on February 19, 1931, when Stalin, a Georgian, and Beria, a Mingrelian, demoted Abkhazia to the status of an autonomous republic within Georgia. This period marked the beginning of what became known as the Stalin and Beria terror in Abkhazia, signaling a significant turn in the region's political and social landscape.
If Mr. Pashinyan stands by the words he spoke in the interview, then based on these facts, he should support the independence of Abkhazia, not Stalin's Soviet Georgian borders. But if he denies what he said despite the video recording, he will go down in history not only as a failure and unreliable but also as a turncoat.
AW https://x.com/AbkhazWorld/status/1728925796004254155?s=20