The right to self-determination for Nagorno-Karabakh meant  "self-government" within Azerbaijan Azerbaijan - Armenian government  statement

ArmInfo.  Myths have existed in Armenia for decades around the Karabakh conflict, which, of course, were formed by the political elite that came to power  through the Karabakh movement, as noted in the official statement of the Armenian government, citing published key documents regarding the  Karabakh negotiation process https://www.gov.am/ru/K- Negotiation-Documents/ ).

 As the source states, they developed these myths  to justify their  coming to and staying in power, and over time, it has become  a  mindset in Armenia, and looking beyond it is  a political taboo, a  betrayal. The government noted that during and after the First  Karabakh War, the negotiations to resolve the conflict were never  about  the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh or its reunification with   Armenia.

"The main subject of the negotiations was that all 7 regions  surrounding Karabakh should be returned to Azerbaijan in a package or  phased version, and the status of Karabakh itself should be  negotiated only under the territorial integrity and sovereignty of  Azerbaijan. This perception of the international community is clearly  recorded in the following part of the statement of the chairman of  the 1996 OSCE Lisbon Summit: "The legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh  should reflected in an agreement based on self- determination, which  will grant Nagorno-Karabakh the highest degree of self-government  within Azerbaijan." This formulation shows that even the concept of  "self-determination" has been mythologized among us, because in the  perception of the international community, the right to  self-determination for Nagorno- Karabakh meant "self-government"  within Azerbaijan. Not autonomy, but self-government. This is also an  important difference.

Having the principle of territorial integrity and the right to  self-determination on the negotiating table at the same time meant  that there could be no definition of the status of Karabakh without  Azerbaijan's consent, because Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan's  territorial integrity. This is clearly stated in the UN Security  Council resolution.  This is also stated in the ideas for determining  the status of Nagorno-Karabakh by referendum, because these ideas  were formulated in such a way that Azerbaijan had grounds to say that  not only Azerbaijanis who had left Nagorno-Karabakh earlier, but also  all citizens of Azerbaijan should participate in the referendum. In  other words, the supposed referendum would take place not in  Karabakh, but in all of Azerbaijan. Armenia did not agree with this  interpretation, and the fact that the referendum did not take place  and the process did not move forward meant that Azerbaijan's position  was decisive, because Karabakh was de jure considered part of  Azerbaijan. This was also stated in the concepts of the exchange of  territories and the common state.

And the longer time dragged on, the more Azerbaijan's positions  hardened, without the possibility of returning to the initial,  relatively more favorable negotiated options.  The documents show  that after the non-violent, velvet, popular revolution of 2018, no  other document or proposal was put on the negotiating table than was  there before it. The date of another document attached to the paper  presented by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs in 2019 is 2016, and the  first sentence of the document shows that it was formulated at a time  when the main negotiator on the issue was the President of the  Republic of Armenia, not the Prime Minister. In other words, the  document was formulated before the 2018 revolution.

Perhaps the most notable of the published documents is the letter of  the third President of the Republic of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, to  the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, which  summarizes the current situation regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh  negotiations as of August 5, 2016. And here a number of important  notes should be made. First, Serzh Sargsyan makes assessments in that  letter that show that: a) Serzh Sargsyan had an assessment of a high  probability of resumption of military or warlike actions, b) he  stated that the military balance between Armenia and Azerbaijan is  upset, c) he emphasized that "the statement of the OSCE Minsk Group  Co-Chairs on the interim or final status is not sufficient  compensation for the actual transfer of territories", d) Azerbaijan  does not assume clear obligations regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh  referendum and the interim status of Nagorno-Karabakh and as a  justification for this assessment, he stated that Azerbaijani  President Aliyev constantly refers to the Azerbaijani Constitution as  an obstacle to holding a referendum in Nagorno-Karabakh, since he  considers it an internal issue of Azerbaijan.

The letter shows that Serzh Sargsyan's government saw a problem with  the expected military-political support from Russia, otherwise there  would be no need for this letter. The military balance had been  upset, including as a result of Russia's active arming of Azerbaijan.  In addition, despite the generally unipolar foreign policy of the  Republic of Armenia, which was supposedly aimed at gaining Russia's  favor in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, approaches were put forward at  the negotiating table by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov  ("Lavrov Plan"), which in 2016 put the Armenian authorities and Serzh  Sargsyan in a hopeless situation.

That is why Serzh Sargsyan is addressing this letter to personally  Vladimir Putin and not to the presidents of the United States or  France, as the heads of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries. It  is from that letter that we decipher that in August 2016, Serzh  Sargsyan understood that he was in a hopeless situation, and if the  approach of the Russian side did not change, then war was inevitable,  and moreover, in the case of an upset military balance, it was  inevitable, with a predictable outcome.  On the one hand, the  uncompromising approaches to NK, and on the other hand, the lack of  expected military-political support, in the conditions of about two  decades of injecting the society with fabricated military-patriotic  propaganda within the country, would have made it impossible to avoid  war. That is why Serzh Sargsyan admitted in his famous speech to the  National Assembly in April 2018 that the negotiations on the NK  conflict were in fact at a deadlock.

Many have probably wondered why since May 2018, when Nikol Pashinyan  had just assumed power, Serzh Sargsyan's entire team was making  incomprehensible accusations that Nikol Pashinyan has come to  "surrender the lands." The publication of the documents and Serzh  Sargsyan's letter to Vladimir Putin provides the answer to these  questions. Serzh Sargsyan knew that war was now inevitable, and the  outcome of the war was more than predictable. And he needed those  statements about surrendering the lands for his political comeback  later.

"It is also worth mentioning another aspect of the alleged interim  status of Karabakh and the alleged referendum to determine its  status. Both Robert Kocharyan's and Serzh Sargsyan's governments  considered them an achievement, while the interim status meant the  disintegration of the de facto status and governance of  Nagorno-Karabakh since the 1990s and the establishment of a new  Armenian-Azerbaijani governance, and the discussion of the idea of a  future referendum meant the delegitimization of the independence  referendum held in Nagorno-Karabakh on December 10, 1991. In other  words, as a result of the negotiation process, the Nagorno-Karabakh  conflict had reached the zero point of 1991 in terms of conten," the  statement reads.