Kocharyan blames Pashinyan for outbreak of 2020 Artsakh war

Former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, the opposition Hayastan alliance’s candidate for prime minister, said Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s handling of negotiations with Azerbaijan and his foreign policy decisions helped create the conditions that led to the 2020 Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) war.

In an interview to Public TV Company on Friday, Kocharyan argued that the 44-day war could have been avoided under different leadership.

“If I had been president, the 44-day war would not have started,” he said. “Armenia provoked the war. It did everything possible for the war to begin.”

Host Petros Ghazaryan challenged the claim, suggesting it mirrored arguments made by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and asking whether Kocharyan was effectively defending Baku’s position.

“No, Nikol Pashinyan is Aliyev’s lawyer,” Kocharyan replied.

Kocharyan accused Pashinyan of derailing the peace process with Azerbaijan, citing the prime minister’s past remarks that he had deliberately avoided engaging in negotiations.

“By failing the negotiation process, Pashinyan legitimized the grounds for Aliyev to launch an attack,” Kocharyan said.

He also criticized Pashinyan’s 2019 declaration that “Artsakh is Armenia, period,” arguing that it amounted to a territorial claim against Azerbaijan and undermined prospects for a negotiated settlement.

According to Kocharyan, the combination of stalled negotiations, domestic political tensions and such statements signaled to Baku that diplomatic talks would not produce results.

He contrasted Pashinyan’s approach with that of Armenia’s previous leaders, saying neither he nor Armenia’s first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, nor third president Serzh Sargsyan had pursued similar policies.

Kocharyan said that during his presidency he supported a settlement model based on the recognition of Artsakh's right to self-determination while also acknowledging Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity outside it. He recalled telling the Council of Europe that Armenia recognized Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, excluding Nagorno-Karabakh.

“That is something no one else did — not the third president, not me, not the first president,” Kocharyan said. “This was a casus belli.”

Kocharyan also identified the deterioration of Armenia’s relations with its strategic ally, Russia, as a third factor that contributed to the outbreak of the war.