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    Categories: 2020

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 11/19/2020

                                        Thursday, 

Prominent General Blames Pashinian For Karabakh Defeat


Armenia - Colonel-General Movses Hakobian, chief of the Armenian army's General 
Staff, visits an army recruitment center in Yerevan, 8 January 2018.

Movses Hakobian, Armenia’s former top army general, on Thursday accused Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian of making disastrous decisions that allowed Azerbaijan 
to make major territorial gains during the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Hakobian charged in particular that three days after the outbreak of the war on 
September 27 Pashinian stopped the reinforcement of Karabakh Armenian army units 
with reservists drafted as part of a military mobilization.

“The country’s prime minister issued an order to stop the reinforcement and send 
volunteers to the frontline instead on the third day of the war,” Hakobian told 
a news conference held one day after he resigned as head of the Armenian Defense 
Ministry’s Military Oversight Service. He described Pashinian’s alleged decision 
as a “crime.”

Hakobian said that many of the volunteers sent from Armenia were poorly trained 
and could not help frontline troops struggling to repel Azerbaijani attacks. He 
claimed that more than a thousand of them deserted their units within days.

“Officials responsible for that process cannot deny this and they know that they 
will eventually be held accountable for not performing that [reinforcement] 
function. The conversation was recorded,” he said without elaborating.

Pashinian was quick to strongly deny the allegations through his press 
secretary, Mane Gevorgian.

“I think that Armenian law-enforcement bodies must investigate all statements 
made by Mr. Hakobian and that they must be clarified and evaluated one by one,” 
said Gevorgian.

Prosecutor-General Artur Davtian said afterwards that his office has sent video 
of the Karabakh-born general’s news conference to the Special Investigative 
Service for examination.

Hakobian, 55, is a prominent veteran of the first Karabakh war of 1991-1994. He 
was the commander of Karabakh’s Armenian-backed army before serving as chief of 
the General Staff of Armenia’s Armed Forces from 2016-2018. Pashinian sacked him 
shortly after coming to power in May 2018.

Hakobian also criticized on Thursday arms acquisitions carried out by Armenia’s 
current leadership. He singled out the purchase of Russian Su-30SM fighter jets 
and second-hand air-defense systems, saying that none of them proved useful in 
the latest war.

Hakobian said the former Armenian government had planned to use the funds spent 
on these weapons for buying more advanced air-defense systems from Russia. They 
would have enabled Karabakh Armenian forces to shoot down many more Azerbaijani 
combat drones that caused them substantial losses.



Armenian Officials Disagree With Putin On Key Karabakh Town

        • Naira Nalbandian

NAGORNO-KARABAKH - Men examine a bomb crater near the Holy Savior Cathedral 
after shelling by Azerbaijan's forces during a military conflict in Shushi, 
October 29, 2020

Armenian officials denied Thursday Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assertion 
that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian would have prevented significant Armenian 
territorial losses in Nagorno-Karabakh had he accepted Azerbaijan’s terms of a 
ceasefire set three weeks before the end of the war.

In an interview with Russian state television, Putin said on Tuesday that the 
Armenian side would have specifically retained control of Shushi (Shusha), 
Karabakh’s second largest town overlooking the capital Stepanakert.

Shushi’s capture by the Azerbaijani army precipitated a Russian-mediated 
ceasefire that stopped the six-week war on November 10. Azerbaijan agreed to 
halt its military operations in return for an Armenian pledge to withdraw by the 
end of this month from three districts around Karabakh.

Baku regained control over four other districts, which had been occupied by 
Karabakh Armenian forces in the early 1990s, during the latest war. Its troops 
also captured Karabakh’s southern Hadrut district as well as Shushi.

Speaking to the Rossiya-24 TV channel, Putin said: “On October 19–20, I had a 
series of telephone conversations with [Azerbaijani] President Aliyev and Prime 
Minister Pashinian. At that time, the armed forces of Azerbaijan regained 
control over an insignificant part of Nagorno-Karabakh, namely, its southern 
section.

“On the whole, I managed to convince President Aliyev that it was possible to 
end hostilities, but the return of [Azerbaijani] refugees, including to Shusha, 
was a mandatory condition on his part. Unexpectedly for me, the position of our 
Armenian partners was that they perceived this as something unacceptable.”

“Prime Minister Pashinian told me openly that he viewed this as a threat to the 
interests of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh,” Putin went on. “I do not quite 
understand the essence of this hypothetical threat. I mean, it was about the 
return of civilians to their homes, while the Armenian side was to have retained 
control over this section of Nagorno-Karabakh, including Shusha.”


Nagorno Karabakh -- Military vehicles of the Russian peacekeeping forces drive 
along a road past a burnt tank near Shusha (Shushi), November 13, 2020.

“At that point, the prime minister told me that his country could not agree to 
this, and that it will keep fighting,” added the Russian president.

The Armenian government has not yet officially reacted to Putin’s claims. 
Armenian opposition leaders have portrayed them as further proof of Pashinian’s 
incompetence and mishandling of the war.

Two senior lawmakers representing Pashinian’s My Step bloc confirmed that a 
truce accord cited by Putin was offered to Armenia last month. But they both 
insisted that its acceptance by Yerevan and the resulting return of refugees to 
Shushi’s would have also restored Azerbaijani control over the strategically 
important town.

“It meant surrendering Shushi,” claimed deputy parliament speaker Lena Nazarian. 
She said that at that point Armenia’s and Karabakh’s leaders still hoped to 
achieve a “turnaround” in the war.

“If Armenia and Artsakh had agreed on October 19-20 to the return of Azerbaijani 
refugees to Shushi we would have been accused now of surrendering Shushi,” 
Nazarian told a joint news conference with the other pro-government lawmaker, 
Arman Yeghoyan.


Armenia - Parliament deputies Lena Nazarian and Arman Yeghoian hold a news 
conference, .

“Shushi’s [next] mayor would be an Azerbaijani because Azerbaijanis would make 
up at least 80 percent of the town’s population,” Yeghoyan claimed for his part.

Edmon Marukian, the leader of the opposition Bright Armenia Party (LHK), 
shrugged off these explanations.

“Shushi would not have an Azerbaijani mayor,” Marukian told reporters. “The 
issue of refugees was discussed but whether or not Azerbaijani refuges would go 
there was an open question.”

The LHK and the second opposition party represented in the parliament, 
Prosperous Armenia, have repeatedly demanded Pashinian’s resignation since the 
announcement of the ceasefire agreement denounced by them as a sellout. The 
prime minister and his political allies reject these demands.



Russian FM Meets U.S., French Envoys On Karabakh


RUSSIA -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks during a joint press 
conference with his Armenian counterpart Zohrab Mnatsakanian following their 
talks in Moscow, October 12, 2020

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met on Wednesday with U.S., Russian and 
French diplomats co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group to discuss the future of the 
Nagorno-Karabakh peace process.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said they looked into “issues of coordinating 
further mediation efforts” by the United States, Russia and France.

Lavrov also discussed with the mediators the situation in the Karabakh conflict 
zone in the wake of a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement that stopped the 
Armenian-Azerbaijani war on November 10, the ministry said in a statement. It 
gave no other details.

Russian President Vladimir Putin brokered the ceasefire agreement six weeks 
after the start of the war that killed thousands of Armenian and Azerbaijani 
soldiers. Putin suggested on Tuesday that the agreement may have laid the 
groundwork for a “long-term and full-fledged resolution” of the conflict.

The deal calls, among other things, for the deployment in the conflict zone of 
around 2,000 Russian peacekeepers and the return of refugees and internally 
displaced persons. But it says nothing about Karabakh’s future status, the main 
bone of contention. This is expected to be a key focus of Armenian-Azerbaijani 
negotiations which the mediators hope will resume soon.

Earlier on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged Armenia and 
Azerbaijan to “re-engage with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs for a lasting 
solution” to the dispute.

Pompeo said the solution should be based on the internationally recognized 
principles of nonuse of force, territorial integrity of states, people’s 
self-determination. The U.S., Russia and France have long advocated such a peace 
formula.

Pompeo discussed the Karabakh conflict with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le 
Drian when he visited Paris on Monday. According to a U.S. State Department 
official, the two men acknowledged Russia’s role in ending the hostilities while 
concurring that Moscow should further clarify terms of the truce accord and 
Turkey’s role in its implementation.


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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