Gegham Manukyan, a member of the opposition Hayastan parliamentary faction, has shared his views on the report by the investigative commission examining the circumstances of the 2020 44-day war. In a Facebook post, Manukyan stated that the report raises even more questions for the authorities, particularly for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Manukyan reiterated that the opposition was right to boycott the commission's work, arguing that their absence was justified by strong reasoning and evidence, and that they refused to participate in what he called a government-led “show.”
“I spent all day yesterday in the National Assembly’s classified section reviewing the report. While the commission chair has already selectively revealed details favoring the authorities, I won’t do the same due to legal restrictions,” Manukyan wrote.
He pointed out that the commission violated deadlines and never presented the report to a full parliamentary session, which, he argued, proves its failure.
Manukyan added that even some MPs from the ruling Civil Contract party did not sign the completed report.
“From the very first pages, it’s clear this commission was set up to avoid answering the public and political questions raised about the war and to whitewash the government's and Pashinyan’s actions. But that proved impossible,” he said.
According to Manukyan, the report instead surfaces serious concerns about flawed staffing decisions, mismanagement of military strategy, and an overall lack of proper analysis during the war. He dismissed attempts to portray the government as naive or misled, arguing that many decisions had disastrous consequences.
He said he will now direct parliamentary inquiries to the Prosecutor General’s Office, Investigative Committee, National Security Service, and the Police, based on the questions that emerged from reading the 2,015-page report.
“In the end, I couldn’t help but recall the saying: ‘After solving a crime, the hardest part is not implicating yourself.’ That’s exactly how this feels,” Manukyan concluded.
Earlier, a dispute emerged between Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan and the commission's chair Andranik Kocharyan over whether the report should be discussed in a full session. Simonyan eventually ordered the report to be archived, citing procedural delays.
