According to the head of European diplomacy, an Armenian sniper shooting at an Azerbaijani border guard after several months of quiet is “deplorable”, but Azerbaijan’s response was, in his opinion, “disproportionate”, and in general, Azerbaijan’s actions are, among other things, “ignoring the announcement by the Armenian Minister of Defense that this incident will be fully investigated.”
Once again, for the “pink ponies” out of touch with reality. Yes, we could imagine that the sniper fired without orders. But there could not have been equipped sniper nests on the border and the sniper could not have been brought to a combat position without orders. It is all the more hard to believe that Nikol Pashinyan, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, was completely unaware of what was going on at the border.
And certainly Pashinyan bears full responsibility for his interview with the British Telegraph, which was rife with unfounded attacks on Azerbaijan. The talk of an “investigation” was nothing more than a diversionary tactic in this case.
It would be all the more interesting to know: what kind of response would Mr. Borrel consider proportionate? Sending flowers to Anna Hakobyan?
Most importantly, EUMA is silent. The very same EUMA that used to disseminate releases on any occasion has now, after a very serious aggravation of the situation, shut up like a clam. Blaming everything on Azerbaijan, when the first shot was fired from the territory of Armenia and it was recorded by video surveillance cameras, will not work. But why does EUMA lack the spirit, political will and objectivity to say that Armenia is responsible?
We recall that the head of EUMA, Markus Ritter, allowed himself to make statements like “Many Armenians believe there’ll be a spring offensive by Azerbaijan. If this doesn’t happen, our mission is already a success” back in March 2023. Even then, experts asked: that is, if a war never happens, it will not be because Azerbaijan has no plans to attack Armenia, but only because the European mission is there with its binoculars?
And now the events on the border confirm that the European mission was completely unprepared for the first shot to be fired from the Armenian side. They did not expect or predict that it would be the “long-suffering Christian Armenia” that would play the aggravation game, and not the other way around.
But the real “Eurodisgrace” is that even after getting irrefutable evidence of Yerevan’s responsibility for the escalation, neither EUMA nor Borrell dare to stroke Armenia the wrong way. And “mistakes” like this in politics come at a high price.
