Pashinyan’s responses to the parliamentary commission
“During the 44-day war, there were weapons, the right to use which did not belong entirely to Armenia,” Nikol Pashinyan said at a meeting of the commission investigating the circumstances of the 2020 Karabakh war.
One of the members of the commission tried to clarify whether the prime minister was referring to the Iskander missile systems. He promised to answer this question during the closed part of the meeting.
A week ago, Pashinyan delivered a detailed report to the members of the parliamentary commission. Now he was answering their questions. Those questions, the answers to which assumed the disclosure of state secrets, were discussed behind closed doors.
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Pashinyan presented the logic of Azerbaijan before the war: “Give what I want peacefully, based on the results of negotiations, or I will get what I want militarily.”
According to the prime minister, he tried to understand what factors could stop this process.
“I confess that I could not stop this conveyor,” he said.
Nikol Pashinyan stated that his perception of the negotiation process at the end of 2019 was the same as at the end of 2018.
“There was only one significant difference. What I knew before December 2018 as a result of my oral contacts and discussions, in the 19th I knew from written documents.”
He said that during the meeting of the OSCE Council of Foreign Ministers in Bratislava in December 2019, Azerbaijan put into circulation the document “Azerbaijan’s approaches to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem.” He assumed the return of territories and refugees, and then the discussion of all other issues.
According to the prime minister, this arrangement of principles and elements of the settlement process “was 180 degrees opposite to the position of the Armenian side.”
The Prime Minister of Armenia spoke at a meeting of the commission investigating the circumstances of the Karabakh war in 2020, and told the details known to him about the course of the war and attempts to stop hostilities
Answering the question why he did not disclose the details of the negotiation process in 2018-2019, Pashinyan said that this is a “legitimate question”, which he himself often asks himself. He noted that at the same time he remembered two important factors:
- what will be the consequences of what is said,
- what will be the next step.
The prime minister recalled that at that time it was about publicizing the current negotiation process at that time, and he was thinking:
“What will happen as a result of disclosure: war or peace? What will be the domestic, regional and international implications?”
He admitted that he was also solving another question in himself: how much he agrees with what he could say:
“It is one thing to see what reality is, and quite another to be in harmony with it, agree with it, or accept this reality as a policy. These are two different things.”
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This was stated by the Prime Minister of Armenia in response to the question of the members of the commission about a possible reverse towards the West.
“On the contrary, we believed that a change in vector could have very serious consequences, primarily in the context of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Pashinyan stressed.
In order to avoid war, according to Pashinyan, the Armenian side had to abandon “the vision of Nagorno-Karabakh not being part of Azerbaijan.”
At the same time, he is not sure that in this way war could be avoided:
“I saw that the military conveyor, which was one-way, was followed by intersections of the content of the negotiations: clarifications related to the Lachin corridor, the process of involving the so-called Armenian and Azerbaijani communities of Nagorno-Karabakh, delimitation and demarcation, etc.”
Russian media, citing a “diplomatic source”, reported that Washington is forcing representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh to agree to a meeting with the Azerbaijani side.
The prime minister said that “there were constant signals” about the likelihood of a war starting – from special services, from open sources, from analysts and international partners. Foreign colleagues, according to Pashinyan, did not rule out that these signals are “psychological pressure on the political authorities in order to make disproportionate concessions.”
“I have been repeatedly informed that our international partners also consider a war unlikely and call on the Armenian Armed Forces not to take, so to speak, drastic actions so as not to provoke a war from scratch,” he said.
Pashinyan said that before the start of the war, intelligence estimated its probability at 30 percent. He says that he did not share this assessment, and ordered “to ensure high vigilance, to show the adequacy of the situation.”
A few months before the war, in July, at a meeting at the Ministry of Defense, he asked if there were any indicators by which to assess the likelihood of an attack. He received a positive response and instructed: “When these indicators appear, the army must act in the prescribed manner.” But, in his opinion, it was not fulfilled.
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It was this assurance that the prime minister heard from the defense structures and personally from the chief of the general staff, when questions about a possible war and the combat capability of the army were discussed:
“There was such an assessment that in the event of a large-scale war it would not be easy, but the Defense Army and the Armed Forces of Armenia are capable of fulfilling the task assigned to them. Moreover, thanks to new acquisitions, including air defense systems.“
Pashinyan said that he pursued this policy immediately after taking office:
“What did it mean? Already in 2019, the salary of contract servicemen in the army increased significantly, weapons and military equipment were purchased.”
According to the prime minister, there was no case when the army set a task for the government and it was not solved because of money. But he also stressed that “the solution of many problems is connected not only with money.”
He denied opposition claims that the military procurement plan under his government had changed, that it did not include air defense systems:
“Another thing is that in our plan there were funds that could not be acquired. Weapons suppliers have their own sales plan, which does not always coincide with our acquisition plan.”
Pashinyan swore that the army never heard the word “no” from him:
“I was guided by this principle until the end of the war. You need a title – it will be, you need a medal – it will be, you need money – too.
Pashinyan’s responses to the parliamentary commission
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“During the war, until the last moment and after it, I don’t remember any disagreements or discrepancies with the political leadership of Nagorno-Karabakh,” Pashinyan said.
He went on that there were cases when the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense denied information provided by the president of the unrecognized republic, but confirmed it after some time, even after a couple of days. According to him, this is a “serious problem” that was observed not only during the war.
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Talking about the voluntary participation in the war of his son Ashot Pashinyan, the Prime Minister said that he did not know where his son was and was not interested:
“I had a reason for this. I thought that if I now ask where my son is, then I do not consider other soldiers as my sons.
The fact that his son was at the front line and participated in the hostilities, he learned only after his return home after November 9th. Later he found out that from the regiment in which Ashot Pashinyan served, 21 soldiers were killed, including his friend.
“The reconnaissance group was assigned a task at the forefront, and he, being a platoon leader, came under fire with a small group. A colleague with whom they were lying in a trench or on the ground, touching their bodies, died,” he said.
Pashinyan’s responses to the parliamentary commission
The prime minister declined answers to questions that, in his opinion, were subject to discussion behind closed doors. These were questions about
- assurances received from the Russian Ministry of Defense that there is no threat of war,
- Armenian intelligence about the upcoming war,
- conflicting information received from the President of the unrecognized NKR, the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff of Armenia during the war,
- types of weapons used during the war, and restrictions on their use,
- air defense systems,
- the loss of Hadrut and Shusha,
- discussions with the President of Russia on the combat readiness of the Armenian Armed Forces and the provision of assistance.