Armenian PM releases flurry of FB notes on Karabakh, recounts interactions with ex presidents

The first President of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan called Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan ‘a national disaster’ earlier today, responding to the Armenian PM’s decision to release a number of Facebook notes pertaining to the Karabakh conflict, interactions he has had in recent months with both Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh presidents and other topics.

More about Pashinyan’s musings on these topics below.

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Meeting with former presidents

In one of his Facebook notes, Nikol Pashinyan said that on October 20 the former presidents of Karabakh Arkadi Ghukasyan and Bako Sahakyan proposed to organize a meeting of the current and former leaders of Armenia and Karabakh, ‘which would become an expression of national unity during the war.’

Then, according to Pashinyan, a nuance was added to this idea: he was offered to play the role of a ‘mediator’ so that Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov would accept ex-presidents of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan and Robert Kocharyan as special envoys, but he did not agree to this.

Pashinyan says he suggested instead of urgently organizing a protocol visit to Moscow for Ter-Petrosyan and Kocharyan as former presidents, where they would meet with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is also deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council.

The ex presidents were not so interested in this proposal, Pashinyan concluded:

“Unexpectedly for me, Sahakyan said that Ter-Petrosyan and Kocharyan had already agreed on a meeting with Lavrov. What then was needed from me? Let them go to Moscow and meet him. It turned out that Kocharyan’s passport was in court [ed. the ex-president is accused of overthrowing the constitutional order, is currently on bail and the trial is ongoing]. And then I advised they petition the court to return his passport, and that I would ask the prosecution not to object. And so it was. Kocharyan’s passport was returned, but he and Ter-Petrosyan never went to Moscow. “

Pashinyan’s entry on the ‘Karabakh impasse’

In another entry, Nikol Pashinyan said that by 2018, when he took office, the Karabakh issue was at an impasse, from which there was only one way out – the unconditional surrender of territories, “and without guarantees that Azerbaijan would not put forward new demands.”

In the context of these new demands, Pashinyan wrote, the likelihood of war increased again.

“But what should we do now? We must gradually stabilize the situation, not aggravate it. The most important issue now is the problem of prisoners, missing persons, perhaps those who were able to hide, a problem that needs to be solved very quickly,” the head of the Cabinet noted.

Attempts to stop the war

Pashinyan also presented some details of attempts to stop the Karabakh war. The fact is that now many accuse him of the being late with the decision to end hostilities.

As Pashinyan writes, on October 19, Karabakh President Arayik Harutyunyan told him that the war must be stopped:

“He also said that he expresses this point of view not only on his own behalf, but also on behalf of the former presidents of Karabakh, Arkadi Ghukasyan, Bako Sahakyan, as well as [former presidents of Armenia] Robert Kocharyan, Serzh Sargsyan and Levon Ter-Petrosyan.”

Then Pashinyan called Putin.

“He said that, in his opinion, this should be done according to the logic of the Russian proposals. That is, to postpone the question of the status of [Karabakh], to transfer the areas [around NK, which came under the control of the Armenian side during the First Karabakh war in the early 90s], and to introduce Russian peacekeepers,” Pashinyan wrote on his Facebook page.

He informed the President of Karabakh about Putin’s answer. Arayik Harutyunyan agreed with the proposal of the Russian President. But it turned out that the former presidents of NK Bako Sahakyan and Arkadi Ghukasyan did not accept any agreements without specifying the status of Karabakh or a clarification mechanism.

“In fact, they said this on behalf of Robert Kocharian, Serzh Sargsyan and Levon Ter-Petrosyan.”

As a result, almost a month later, on the night of November 10, a statement was signed, which many in Armenia now perceive of as a ‘traitorous’ document voluntarily transferring Karabakh to Azerbaijan.