Serzh Sargsyan reveals 2020 meeting with senior foreign diplomat

Former Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan revealed he met with a senior foreign diplomat on 30 September 2020, days before traveling to Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) during the 44-day war, expressing fears that Armenia was heading toward defeat.

Speaking during an episode of the Imnemnimi podcast on Friday, Sargsyan said he told the diplomat he had “a bad feeling” about the course of the war and warned that a potential military disaster could trigger anti-Russian sentiment and efforts to pull Armenia out of its security alliances.

Sargsyan said that during a subsequent visit to Nagorno-Karabakh, he met with former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, two former Artsakh leaders and war veterans. He asked former Artsakh President Bako Sahakyan to arrange a meeting with then Artsakh leader Arayik Harutyunyan to call for an immediate end to hostilities through Russian mediation.

“I wanted to tell him that we were heading toward defeat and that it was essential to convince the government in Yerevan to stop the war by appealing to the Russian president,” Sargsyan said. However, he noted that Harutyunyan declined the meeting, saying he was in the town of Martakert, where the situation was tense.

The former president said the group later agreed in Yerevan that Kocharyan and first Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan should travel to Moscow to gauge whether a truce was possible, however the Armenian government did not formally endorse the effort.