Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, on the day of the panel discussion with the participation of the Armenian and Georgian government heads at the Munich Security Conference, stated the need to establish a checkpoint at the entrance to and exit from the Lachin corridor, as well as at the entrance to and exit from Nakhijevan to Armenia via the now non-existent road from Nakhijevan to Azerbaijan.

It turns out that Aliyev has decided de-jure to eliminate the notion of the Lachin corridor, where he previously drove agents of the Azerbaijani special services under the guise of environmentalists, who play the role of a live checkpoint, in violation of the trilateral statement of November 9, 2020, preventing the free movement of people and goods. After all, if there is a checkpoint, it is no longer a corridor.

Since December 12, 2022 a group of Azerbaijanis blocked the Stepanakert-Goris road for allegedly environmental reasons, making political demands and keeping 120 thousand people in the blockade for over two months, creating a humanitarian crisis, including for children and the sick. Azerbaijan also periodically cuts off the gas supply to Nagorno-Karabakh. During a meeting of the UN Security Council, convened on December 21, 2022 at the request of Armenia, there was a call to unblock the Lachin corridor. Despite this, as well as numerous calls by the international community, Azerbaijan's blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh continues. 

The second part of the Azerbaijani president's statement, also aimed at the corridor, is no less remarkable, although it is only imaginary. Does the statement about the need to set up a checkpoint when passing through the Syunik province of Armenia mean the rejection of the idea of a corridor which he himself invented? Once again, the term "corridor" means there should not be any checkpoints.  At the same time, Aliyev did not forget to use a fictitious, but so pleasant to the ear phrase "Zangezur corridor" for the internal audience. At the same time he turned everything upside down trying to edit in his own convenient way the statement signed by him on November 9, 2020, which mentions only one corridor - Lachin corridor in black and white in two paragraphs and no "corridor" through Syunik. However, Aliyev presented everything in contrary way in Munich - there is no Lachin corridor, but only so-called "Zangezur corridor".

The concept of Lachin corridor in the statement of November 9, is used in clause 3 (deployment of Russian peacekeepers) and clause 6 (obligation of Azerbaijan to guarantee safety of movement through Lachin corridor of citizens, vehicles and cargo in both directions).

In addition, Iran, Armenia and Russia (at the public level) have repeatedly stated that the road through the Syunik province should not be extraterritorial. Iran, whose interests are primarily affected by the Turanian corridor, has spoken about this at the highest level.

The words of the Iranian spiritual leader Ali Khamenei about the inadmissibility of changing the Armenian-Iranian border, translated into the understandable language for the Azeri-Turkish tandem, mean: no corridor through Syunik. This was followed by the opening of the Iranian Consulate General in Kapan in the Syunik province of Armenia as a political and physical barrier. We can also recall the repeated statements by Alexey Overchuk, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government and head of the trilateral working group on the unblocking of transport communications, to the effect that "we are not and cannot talk about any 'extraterritorial corridor' during the talks between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia."

Aram Danielyan