Vartan Oskanian: Only in the alternate reality of Pashinyan’s cheerleaders can Armenia’s effective surrender of the Zangezur corridor be portrayed as a ‘strategic win’

Only in the alternate reality of Pashinyan’s cheerleaders can Armenia’s effective surrender of the Zangezur corridor be portrayed as a “strategic win”, Vartan Oskanian, Former Foreign Minister of Armenia, writes.

“When you hand over a strip of land spanning the full width of your country — east to west — to be supervised by a third country and used by Azerbaijan for 99 years, without customs, without border control, and without even the basic right to inspect what passes through, you are surrendering your sovereignty. No amount of political spin can change this reality. You are leasing away a part of your sovereignty for at least two generations. That is not diplomacy — it is a fire sale of national dignity.

The claim that “Azerbaijan did not get what it wanted” and that “this does not harm Armenia’s sovereignty” insults both logic and the intelligence of the Armenian people. In no credible framework of statehood does granting a foreign power unimpeded passage through your territory preserve sovereignty.

This is not “normalizing transport links;” it is embedding a corridor of dependency and humiliation at the heart of Syunik. It is a wound cut deep into Armenia’s territorial body,” Oskanian writes.