Through pressure, Azerbaijan is attempting to make the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) authorities come to negotiations, and for Armenia to agree that there is no point in the final peace treaty regarding a third country guaranteeing Artsakh's security, political scientist Beniamin Matevosyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

According to the political scientist, Azerbaijan's another objective is for Armenia to sign the aforesaid peace treaty without any clear maps.

"The [peace] talks have not stopped; it’s just that actions are taking place more on the battlefield. With military actions, Azerbaijan is pressuring Yerevan and getting whatever it wants. In fact, the Washington talks [slated for this week in Washington] were postponed, so that before the next phase, they take Artsakh to the scaffold [for execution], and it will be at the negotiating table with Azerbaijan, according to vertical logic. With the format in which they want to bring Artsakh to the negotiating table, assumes that Artsakh is not a full-fledged entity, but an administrative territorial unit of Azerbaijan, as [PM Nikol] Pashinyan would meet, for example, the provincial governor of [Armenia’s] Shirak. They want to bring the next phase of the Washington talks to a situation where it will be specified that the Artsakh issue is an internal Azerbaijani issue. In this case why is the Russian peacekeeper there? The best guarantee for Artsakh is the constitution of Azerbaijan; this is the logic," Matevosyan said.

According to him, Azerbaijan's goal is not only Artsakh, but also Armenia, and they do not hide it.

"The purpose of placing a flag [of Azerbaijan] on Armenian land is to exacerbate the Artsakh authorities to go and participate in talks. Azerbaijan says ‘we recognize the territorial integrity of Armenia, but with our maps; that is, no 29,800 square kilometers.’ The authorities of Armenia are not negotiating about the status of Artsakh, but about the status of the Republic of Armenia within the framework of the Turkey-Azerbaijan military-political alliance. The ultimate goal of Azerbaijan is the dissolution of the ‘statehood’ status of Armenia," Matevosyan stressed.