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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