The Only Person Responsible for Losing in War is the One Who Declared a State of War: Movses Hakobyan

It turns out that the plans for purchasing and developing weapons have not changed, and our drafted plan is still in place. I thought it would have been altered due to the new leadership. This was stated by Movses Hakobyan, the former head of the military control service of the Ministry of Defense, former Minister of Defense of Artsakh, and former Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia, in an interview with 24news.am.

“The plan is an old one; if I were in charge, I would change it. It is bad that no changes have been made, and even worse that the existing plan has not been implemented,” he said, emphasizing that the preparedness of troops and tactics are crucial in wartime.

He noted that he believes we have lost control in the war and that we still need to determine what parallel management levels were in place, which everyone enthusiastically discusses without realizing the dangers it entails. “Who was Samvel Babayan to me? What element of the management chain is he? I can be presented by the Minister of Defense or the Prime Minister, but not by Babayan,” he stated.

Movses Hakobyan mentioned that he is aware of one or two instances of desertion within the command, which should not be decisive. Regarding Nikol Pashinyan's statement that he is the number one responsible but not the number one guilty, Hakobyan said, “If I am the responsible person and I have led my organization to a more painful defeat, then I am also guilty. The commander is responsible for the execution of the order; if you declared a state of war in the country, the law requires that you alone are responsible for the non-execution of that order. In other words, the only person responsible for losing in the war is the one who declared a state of war,” he stated.

Hakobyan noted that in this war, we opted to resist the decisions made by the adversary, and our own decisions were absent, with no significant regroupings taking place. When they did occur, they were quite disorganized, which also led to the loss of the management system.

Commenting on Nikol Pashinyan's statement regarding Shushi, Movses Hakobyan said he would address it from a military perspective. “A military person forms an idea before making a decision; if the leader's idea was that Shushi was a dreary city, not a flourishing city, if it was deemed ‘Azerbaijani,’ then this has been realized. For me, Shushi has always been the best place in the world, and I had planned to live there after retiring,” he said.