Today, on October 6, the 10th day of the unprecedented Azerbaijani-Turkish aggression against Artsakh, the frontline was relatively calm. Reports suggest that a meeting may take place between the representatives of Armenia and Azerbaijan. And as the information flood has subsided a bit, I will try to consider the new negotiation agenda that Artsakh and Armenia must impose. Not for today’s negotiations that will deal exclusively with the consequences of the war, but for the main, as the mediators like to call them, “substantive” negotiations.

Aliyev destroyed the concept of “delayed status”

Any mention of “delayed status” after this war will mean that Azerbaijan is already thinking about a new war.

With the principle of “delayed status” (Artsakh gets an intermediate status, and the final one is determined 10 or 15 years later through a voting organized by vague criteria) on the negotiation table for more than a decade, Azerbaijan never said it would be ready to accept the Artsakh vote. In general, Baku has never spoken about the expression of the will of the people of Artsakh.

Of course, after this war (which, by the way, can resume at any moment) we must not agree on any unclearly defined point, particularly on a key issue such as the status of Artsakh.

The territories

As ridiculous as it may sound, but by starting the war “to return the territories”, Aliyev himself has proven that the return of these territories is impossible until he renounces the idea of “seizing” Artsakh.

Imagine if the Armenian side had conceded one or more regions before the war. We would not have Artsakh today: the heavy, brutal battles fought in the buffer zone would have unfolded in Artsakh proper, destroying it. With Stepanakert suffering so much now, imagine what would have happened if Azerbaijan was closer to the city.

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There are many other issues, big and small, but I think these two are the core matters. There can be no return to previous discussions after such a brutal attack, and the mediators have to understand it as well. They must admit that this war has showed that the Armenians did not talk about the danger to their existence for nothing.

With this war, Ilham Aliyev has proven that he wants Artsakh without Armenians. No normal person can assume that anyone in Artsakh would believe the fairytales of “the widest possible autonomy” after the cluster bombs and Smerch strikes.

The red line between Artsakh and Azerbaijan was drawn long ago, during the first war, but now Aliyev has turned that line into such a wide abyss that he himself can get out of it only if he accepts the new agenda of peace talks, which we impose.

Ara Tadevosyan is Director of Mediamax