Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan responded to recent interviews by former presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, accusing them of confirming that the Nagorno-Karabakh issue had been used as a leash by external forces to restrain Armenia.
In a Facebook post, Pashinyan wrote that the statements by Kocharyan and Sargsyan reaffirm that the Karabakh issue was long held by certain “known forces” as a tool to keep Armenia bound “to the nearest tree.”
“Talk of people’s rights, historical justice, and similar terms were merely smoke screens hiding the real goal,” Pashinyan stated.
He pledged again to publish the full set of negotiation documents by year’s end, arguing that all past proposals aimed only to tighten that leash. “All offers to ‘end the war’ were, in essence, about shortening that leash,” he wrote.
According to the Prime Minister, the ultimate goal of this process was the destruction of Armenian statehood, and under that scenario, the Karabakh conflict could only end with Armenia’s collapse.
“But Armenia, thanks to the lives of its martyrs and the historic intuition of its people, both in Armenia and Karabakh, managed to escape that scenario,” he wrote.
Pashinyan accused Kocharyan and Sargsyan of now trying to return Armenia to that same track, which he claimed was “originally scripted and executed under the slogan ‘Lenin, the Party, Gorbachev’ and likely with KGB backing.”
He also warned of efforts to form a new cohort of “young Leninist-Party-Gorbachevists” under the patronage of old KGB networks.
“Expected result: 0 + 0 = 0,” he concluded.
In a postscript, Pashinyan reiterated the government’s commitment to resettle displaced Artsakh Armenians in Armenia: “It’s a complex, resource-heavy task, but we will continue implementing it.”
In recent remarks, Robert Kocharyan accused Pashinyan of rejecting a Russian ceasefire offer in October 2020, knowing defeat was imminent. He also compared the November 9 agreement’s 9th clause to the Trump Route clause in the Washington documents, arguing they were identical in meaning but mishandled by Yerevan, ultimately leading to the loss of Artsakh.
