As long as the threat of ethnic cleansing and genocide hangs over the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, the existence of its Defense Army is justified. This was announced by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting of the Armenian government.

According to him, however, the Defense Army is not the only mechanism for preventing the Armenian genocide of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, as the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh is also such a mechanism.

"The Russian Federation has officially recorded the probability of mass killing of the [Armenian] civilian population of Nagorno-Karabakh [by Azerbaijan] and assumed the role of the guarantor of the security of the people and civil infrastructures of Nagorno-Karabakh. We hope that the Russian Federation will fully fulfill the above-mentioned function. But if our friend and ally, the Russian Federation, cannot fulfill this role for any objective reason, I believe it itself should petition to the UN Security Council, raising the alarm about the danger of massive killings of the civilian population and the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the need to launch additional international mechanisms in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin corridor to prevent this," said Pashinyan.

The Armenian PM emphasized that he does not have any assumptions about the activities of the Russian peacekeeping troops in Nagorno-Karabakh.

"Simply, the series of events that have taken place in the last more than two years (…) are disturbing. At the same time, I cannot fail to mention the unique role of the Russian peacekeeping contingent, its merit in the fact that the crisis that started in Nagorno-Karabakh—due to the illegal closure of the Lachin corridor since December 12 [by Azerbaijan]—has not turned into a humanitarian disaster. I want to thank for the efforts towards that goal,” the Armenian PM said.