Armenia’s six-point proposal in response to Azerbaijan's original peace package remains shrouded in obscurity, albeit one that is peppered with holes. Only certain purported elements of what at present may only be perceived as a semi-phantom document are known to the general public.

As Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan struggles to probe and penetrate the most peace-resistant stratum of Armenian society to gain its support, his detractors are continuing to foment resistance against what they believe is nothing but "inglorious peace".

After the 2020 ceasefire deal, Baku has successfully managed to take the subject of the Karabakh Armenians off the negotiation table. Originally, the mandate to address the issue was vested with the OSCE Minsk Group, which is no longer capable of activity, and is currently being dismantled or rather disintegrated. The trilateral formats mediated by Moscow and Brussels are mostly focused on the Azerbaijani-Armenian interstate peace agenda, at least, for now.

Some of the provisions entailed in Articles 24–28 of the joint declaration by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan were not pleasing to Azerbaijani ears, to put it mildly. Neither the reference to the dysfunctional OSCE Minsk Group, nor the use of the term “Nagorno-Karabakh” have gone unheeded in Baku.

Acrimonious pleas permeating the domain in which the Armenian opposition reign supreme are full of tempestuous notes. The fecundity of the reasoning prowess of those vehemently resisting the incumbent government’s progressive Karabakh agenda is being trammelled by one simple urge, where all conceivable measures are being taken to ensure the impossibility of a peace treaty with Azerbaijan.

During almost 30 years of occupation of Azerbaijani territories, Armenia razed to the ground, looted and burnt down houses, public buildings, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, industrial enterprises, and even destroyed cemeteries.

The closer Baku and Yerevan move towards a peace deal, the more infuriated and vehement the separatist remnants still present in the mountainous part of Karabakh become.

After the 2020 November ceasefire that ended the Second Karabakh War, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that: “this is not a victory, but there is no defeat until you consider yourself defeated”. Back then it looked like an attempt to put on a brave face at a time of national disaster and a cheap remark to placate his disillusioned nation.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s recently-acquired taste for honesty, that first manifested itself in the December 26 press conference, has again been thrust upon the political elites in Yerevan and the public with an effect that, not to put too fine a point on it, was not too far away from that of a thunderclap.

If March was a month marked with the offer of the victor (Azerbaijan) and implicit acquiescence of the vanquished (Armenia), April has so far transpired to be the month of a new beginning.