Speaking to reporters at Matenadaran ahead of a conference marking his 80th birthday, Armenia’s first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan addressed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s proposal for a debate. He said the dispute would be resolved if Pashinyan published all documents related to Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Let him publish every document on Karabakh that he has. I’ve said this a hundred times. If he does, the argument will be over, because everything is already written there,” Ter-Petrosyan stated, according to Sputnik Armenia.
Asked about accusations that Pashinyan manipulates facts and would still shift blame onto him, Ter-Petrosyan replied calmly: “Let him.”
On whether Pashinyan is his “spiritual successor,” Ter-Petrosyan responded: “I never said that. Others say it. Did I ever call him my protégé? In 2008, many stood by me, including Nikol. At the time, they all worked well.”
He also revisited his 2018 comments on the Velvet Revolution, saying his reaction then was a natural response to events. “How else could I evaluate that wave? It was a storm. The man succeeded, and you must acknowledge that. He achieved what he aimed for, i.e., removing the old authorities. I wasn’t judging it as good or bad,” he noted.
According to Ter-Petrosyan, Pashinyan himself destroyed all possibilities for phased or comprehensive Karabakh settlement by declaring in Stepanakert that “Artsakh is Armenia,” which he said directly led to war.
He underlined that Pashinyan’s peace agenda has nothing in common with the approaches he himself once advanced. “There is absolutely no connection between my Karabakh policy and his,” he insisted.
Recently, Prime Minister Pashinyan again accused Armenia’s three former presidents of election fraud and dragging the country into crisis, while also blaming them for forcing 18-year-old soldiers to guard borders outside sovereign Armenia. He invited them to a public debate, but all three presidential offices responded harshly. In turn, on September 21, Ter-Petrosyan wrote that Pashinyan had already secured “his dishonorable place on the plaque of infamous traitors,” accusing the prime minister of obsession and arrogance without limits.
