I'm John Bench, who was my colleague, Anatoly Bano, the

Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, recently back from traveling in the South

Caucasus, Armenia and Georgia, and we are reflecting now upon an outbreak of violence

in the region called Nagorno-Karabakh, a dispute between Azerbaijan, a former Soviet state,

now critical part, the infrastructure of energy for them, not only for Eurasia, but also

for Europe eventually.

And Armenia, which is independent but remained very much under this sway of Moscow, the

violence was quick, there's now a ceasefire in place, we have a couple of minutes and

a toll, we're used to prize by this outbreak.

I understand in Yerevan the capital of Armenia, there are protests calling for the resignation

of the Prime Minister, and you were in Yerevan recently, what is driving this call against

a peasantian, he didn't launch the attack.

No indeed, but among more hard-line nationalists in Armenia, there is the feeling that

peasantian has not done nearly enough to save Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, that first

he should have declared mass mobilization in Armenia basically called up the entire

male population, the way that the Ukrainians have done and flung them into the war, and secondly

that it was a mistake to turn away from Russia and towards the West, although members of

the Ukrainian, of the Armenian government say that, well, look, Russia can't help us

anyway anymore, because it's so tied down in Ukraine that the Russian peacekeepers are

just not able or willing to defend the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, but I mean

the fact of the matter is that the Azeris have won, they've won on the battlefield, and I

think that this isn't a ceasefire, but it is also basically an unconditional surrender

...