Former Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan has accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of being responsible for the fall of Artsakh, following the latter’s remarks about the policies of previous Armenian governments regarding the conflict with Azerbaijan. Pashinyan asserted on Monday that all peace proposals developed by international mediators since 1994 had effectively aimed at returning Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. He described his “big mistake” as failing to inform Armenians of this reality after assuming office in 2018.
The offices of former Presidents Robert Kocharyan, Serzh Sargsyan, and Ter-Petrosyan issued a joint response, accusing Pashinyan of distorting the history of negotiations mediated by the United States, Russia, and France. They argued that he was deflecting blame for the 2020 war and Azerbaijan’s subsequent control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In an unusual move, Pashinyan invited the former leaders to a televised debate on the issue. Ter-Petrosyan dismissed the proposal, stating that there was no basis for such a discussion. “What should I debate with you when the subject of the debate, the millennia-old Armenian Artsakh, no longer exists due to your adventurism?” Ter-Petrosyan wrote in a statement released Wednesday night. He further challenged Pashinyan to publish all peace proposals drafted by the OSCE Minsk Group and Armenia’s responses to them, asserting that this would facilitate a fact-based discussion. Failure to do so, he argued, would confirm that Pashinyan was evading accountability.
As of Thursday evening, neither Pashinyan nor his press office had responded. Meanwhile, other opposition figures and public personalities echoed the call for transparency, pressing the prime minister to disclose details of the peace negotiations.
The peace proposals in question were largely based on the Madrid Principles, introduced in 2007 by the U.S., Russian, and French mediators of the OSCE Minsk Group. These principles called for the Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination, a phased withdrawal of Armenian forces from Azerbaijani territories, and a future referendum to determine Karabakh’s status.
Levon Zurabyan, deputy chairman of Ter-Petrosyan’s Armenian National Congress party, refuted Pashinyan’s claim that Armenian diplomacy sought to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijan. “Nikol is lying,” Zurabyan said. “Armenian diplomacy consistently opposed such an outcome. If what he says were true, the conflict would have been resolved in 1992.”
Vartan Oskanian, Armenia’s foreign minister under Kocharyan, also accused Pashinyan of misrepresenting the negotiation process. “He lies to justify his mistakes and absolve himself of blame,” Oskanian said. Offering to debate Pashinyan directly, he stated that the prime minister was misleading the Armenian people.
Opposition leaders have long held Pashinyan responsible for Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 war and the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan in 2023. They argue that his rejection of a 2019 version of the Madrid Principles paved the way for the six-week conflict. In 2021, Serzh Sargsyan released a secretly recorded audio of Pashinyan from 2019, in which the prime minister suggested he would “play the fool” to avoid committing to a settlement.
While Pashinyan continues to point fingers at his predecessors, critics insist that his handling of the conflict and the subsequent fallout have left Armenia in a precarious position. As the blame game intensifies, the debate over historical responsibility remains a focal point of political discourse in Armenia.
