Public figure Edgar Ghazaryan responded to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Facebook post, where the PM asked why Armenian soldiers were outside Armenia’s sovereign borders before 2018 if he alone had dragged the country into war.
According to Ghazaryan, Pashinyan’s statements effectively brand his own family as “war criminals,” Pastinfo reported.
He recalled that after the April War, Pashinyan personally carried out combat tasks in Martakert as part of a volunteer detachment under Artsakh’s Defense Army command. As prime minister, he frequently visited Artsakh, hosted its president in Yerevan, and his son served in the Artsakh Defense Army voluntarily, after submitting a request to be stationed there.
During the 44-day war, Pashinyan issued calls to arms, declared nationwide mobilization in Armenia, and on October 6, 2020, traveled to Artsakh, where he attended the Defense Army headquarters and took part in command decisions. His wife, Ghazaryan noted, also formed and led a volunteer detachment that undertook combat tasks.
“By his own declarations, this means his entire family were war criminals,” Ghazaryan argued.
He added that neither Levon Ter-Petrosyan nor the other former presidents engaged in unconstitutional or unlawful acts.
Commenting on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, Ghazaryan said Armenia simply used it to join the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an organization created earlier. “Armenia later joined other bodies such as the CSTO and the UN, and membership in each organization never meant a problem for Armenia,” he explained.
Earlier, Pashinyan accused Armenia’s three former presidents of dragging the country into war and suggested holding a debate in his former prison cell. Ter-Petrosyan responded on September 21, saying Pashinyan had already secured his “dishonorable place” among Armenia’s infamous traitors, adding that his “obsession and insolence know no bounds.”
