As reported by Caucasus Watch earlier, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev held heated talks in a trilateral meeting mediated by the US  Secretary of State Antony Blinken and in a plenary debate within the framework of the 59th Munich Security Conference on February 18. The sides discussed the whole spectrum of current matters; however, no substantive agreement has been reached on any of the issues.

The debates provoked heated discussions in Armenia that manifested in plenty of divisive remarks on social media regarding Nikol Pashinyan’s “inadequate response to Aliyev’s belligerent rhetoric." 

The current leader of the “For the Republic” pro-western political party Arman Babajanyan who also attended the conference, later commented on it through his social media profile. He decried Aliyev’s speech as pure war propaganda while claiming that “Yerevan didn’t best point out the similarities between Baku’s unprovoked war on Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh] and Russia’s war on Ukraine that occurred in violation of international law, although Baku itself acknowledged this, especially by calling the November 9 statement as an act of capitulation.” According to Babajanyan, Armenia's call to give up revenge and seek a peaceful future was the most impressive and the most discussed message off the premises. 

The deputy head of the “Armenian National Congress” political party Levon Zurabyan drew harsh criticism towards the fact that Pashinyan could not provide any convincing arguments to refute Aliyev’s false claims about Armenia’s alleged violation of UN Security Council resolutions, the absence of a blockade in the Lachine Corridor and the invalidity of the name of “Nagorno-Karabakh.” According to Zurabyan, the Armenian PM must have opposed this unsound argument stressing that the term "Nagorno-Karabakh" is enshrined in all international documents, even in UN Security Council resolutions mentioned by Aliyev, and in all OSCE documents. Referring to Aliyev’s quote on Pashinyan’s victory in elections in the wake of the defeat in war, Zurabyan contended that Pashinyan’s re-election only intensified Azerbaijan’s aggression towards Armenia. 

The weaknesses of Pashinyan’s stance on the Karabakh issue sparked fury among several political and foreign policy analysts and opposition-owned media. 

As media columnist Korun Manukian puts it, the remnants of Nagorno-Karabakh were saved and kept by Russia. However, Pashinyan's government sidelined Russia from the Armenian-Azerbaijani process, turning to Prague, where Nagorno-Karabakh is recognized as a part of Azerbaijan. 

This criticism, among others, portrays the current dominating political debate theme: Pashinyan is pursuing “a policy of removing Russian peacekeeping and military presence from Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia." This suggests that Pashinyan joined the anti-Russian coalition at the cost of “eliminating both Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh."

Deputy chairman of Armenia’s former ruling Republican Party Armen Ashotyan also referred to the “deficiencies” of Pashinyan’s speech stating that the Armenian PM must have mentioned “the negative implications of virtual inactivity of the OSCE Minsk Group, which ceased to exist as a result of Russia-Ukraine war.” He said that the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs trio would hinder the proper resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Ashotyan commented on Aliyev’s remarks about Nagorno-Karabakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan denouncing him “as a criminal oligarch, who was ‘exported’ to Azerbaijan’s Karabakh from Moscow. He overshadowed this claim by bringing forward the remarkable argument that Aliyev has no moral right to speak about this, given his link to offshore tycoons as exposed by Panama and Pandora papers. 

Suren Sargsyan, an expert on US foreign policy, thinks that Pashinyan did not bring any tangible benefit from the Munich conference. He denounced Aliyev’s speech aggressively, as usual, while calling Pashinyan’s inadequate response to all the addressed comments a failure of diplomacy. Sargsyan also linked this to Armenia's lack of a clear foreign policy strategy. 

Overall, despite the public discontent over Pashinyan’s statements and current peace agenda, conditions for a significant political change are not yet visible.