Sargsyan Had Committed to Handing Over a Large Part of Artsakh to Azerbaijan, Says Daniel Ioannisyan

Daniel Ioannisyan, founder and program coordinator of the 'Informed Citizens' NGO and member of the Public Council, wrote on his Facebook page: “Let there be no dishonesty, but the revolution saved Artsakh. Serzh Sargsyan had committed to handing over a large part of the territories of Artsakh (7 former regions) to Azerbaijan, and he even publicly admitted this.

Under Robert Kocharian, Stepanakert was first removed from negotiations, and while in the 1990s many international documents referred to the conflict as ‘the conflict between Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan’, in the 2000s, the term ‘territories occupied by Azerbaijan from Armenia’ became more popular (details will be published soon).

Now, the authorities face the task of eliminating the consequences of these mistakes, explaining to the international community that Serzh Sargsyan's promises to give up land will not be fulfilled and that Stepanakert should be at the negotiating table. All of this is available in open sources. And I deeply, deeply regret that details of the obligations assumed by previous administrations are not being made public. I hope that one day the authorities will do this.

However, the available and published facts are already sufficient to assert that a person who had promised the international community to hand over a significant part of the Republic of Artsakh’s territory was removed from power by revolution. And now members of the Republican Party and certain figures who have been propagating the ‘Nation-Army’ narrative are tearing their hair out claiming that ‘Nikol is giving away the lands’.

P.S. And I am not even mentioning how over the decades, corruption weakened Armenia and, as a result, our ability to defend Artsakh.”