A regular Cabinet meeting took place today, chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Before discussing the agenda, the Prime Minister referred to the blocking of the pipeline supplying gas to Nagorno Karabakh by Azerbaijan again yesterday and noted that since December 12, 2022, Azerbaijan has carried out about 27 similar operations with the pipeline supplying gas to Nagorno Karabakh, which has led to a humanitarian and environmental crisis. In his speech, Nikol Pashinyan noted:

"Dear participants of the Cabinet meeting,

Dear people,

Yesterday, Azerbaijan again blocked the gas supply pipeline to Nagorno Karabakh, while the gas supply had been restored just a day ago. Before that, Azerbaijan had opened the pipeline 7 days ago and had closed it 4 days before that. Since December 12, Azerbaijan has blocked the gas supply to Nagorno Karabakh 7 times, moreover, this statistic does not express the whole picture, because various events take place in the period between gas supply stops and restorations, for example, the gas supply is stopped not completely, but at 50 percent, then the volume of supplied gas becomes 70 percent, then drops to 10 percent, the next moment becomes 30 percent, then recovers completely, then drops again to 40 percent and so on continuously. Such fluctuations can sometimes occur several times a day or every few days. Moreover, this is no longer an action of the "eco-activists", but a state action, because if the "eco-activists" are present and visible in the Lachin corridor, they have not been noticed at the section of the gas pipeline.

Since December 12, 2022, Azerbaijan has carried out about 27 similar operations with the pipeline supplying gas to Nagorno Karabakh. It should be emphasized that Azerbaijan's illegal blockade of the Lachin Corridor, which has an "environmental" guise, has led to real environmental problems in Nagorno-Karabakh, because, as you know, Azerbaijan has also blocked the supply of electricity to Nagorno-Karabakh, and because local power generation capacities are not enough, the authorities of Nagorno-Karabakh have to carry out electricity outages for 6, 8, 10 hours a day, depending on the weather. In these conditions, our compatriots in Nagorno-Karabakh are forced to use wood to heat their homes, which in turn leads to deforestation, which has the potential to turn into a serious environmental disaster, especially if we consider that snow has fallen in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the air temperature at night drops to 5 degrees below zero.

By this, Azerbaijan's alleged environmental goals are once again vanished, because Azerbaijan's illegal blockade of the Lachin Corridor, which began 60 days ago, has led to an environmental crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, in addition to a humanitarian crisis.

Dear attendees,

Dear people,

These actions of Azerbaijan have one goal: to break the will of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to live in their homeland, which, we believe, is unbreakable. However, we must increase our efforts to focus international attention on the humanitarian and now also environmental crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is the result of aggressive and provocative actions of Azerbaijan.

At the same time, I want to thank those international organizations and countries that have expressed an objective position about the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh. Our international efforts should be aimed at making the rising environmental crisis a subject of wide international discussion as well. And, I think, it is necessary that the illegal blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the humanitarian and environmental crises in Nagorno-Karabakh become the subject of a more institutionalized international discussion, because only the unabated activity of the international community is the way to curb Azerbaijan's aggressiveness and provocative behaviour. Thank you."