Pashinyan blames failures in Karabakh war on predecessors' 'plunder'

Prime Minister  Nikol Pashinyan threw fresh accusations at the former government on Tuesday, criticizing the predecessors for plunder and corrupt practices that "contributed to Armenia's defeat" in the second Karabakh (Artsakh) war.

"The idea that we could have avoided this war in case of flexible policies is now more often than not being put into circulation.

"Those circulating the thesis have to respond at least to one question however: why was it never possible to avoid the 2016 war - which followed an unprecedented escalation in 2014  and 2015 - as a result of the 'flexible' policies pursued by them?

"The 'flexible' policies pursued by Armenia for many years led to circulating the Russian proposals in January 2016, which implied the return of seven regions (5 + 2) without any specification of the Nagorno-Karabakh status.

"Why did Russia put forward such a proposal? For the simple reason that the 'flexible' polices pursued by Armenia led the process to a deadlock - given that Artsakh could not be possibly granted any status without Azerbaijan's consent unless it was part of Azerbaijan.

"It was obvious to Russia and every other side that Azerbaijan would never agree to such an option (and had enough capacities not to); hence it was important to find possible ways to break the deadlock. And by the way, while it is true - as certain individuals allege - that Armenia did not pursue enough pro-Russian policies after 2018, eventually causing the war, why then, under conditions of 'enough pro-Russian policies' back in 2016, did the Russian proposals come into being, leading to the April War?

"There was one possible option to avoid the war: to return the territories, forgetting about the status of Artsakh. And now, certainly, many proponents of that option have understandably increased in number. But they do not take into consideration the fact that an Azerbaijani signboard would, some way or another, inevitably pop up in the Eyvazlli section in the vicinity of Goris. We were also used to be accused of 'selling the lands'. And now they are putting captives' lives at stake by making suspicious statements.

 "The major omission of those advocating 'flexible' policies is that they for many years pursued policies of avoiding, rather than preparing for, a war. Our major omission is that we did not manage, in the past two and a half years, to return considerable amounts of the stolen money in order to prepare for the war," Pashinyan said in a public post on Facebook.