Security Council Secretary on Mutual Accusations Between Onik Gasparyan and Nikol Pashinyan

It is important to remember what the political situation was in Armenia on November 17, and we believed that solving that issue was not the most crucial problem for Armenia at that moment. This was stated today, April 16, by the Secretary of the National Security Council Armen Grigoryan in an interview with Factor.am, responding to a question about why the NSC office released documents from yesterday's meeting that supposedly confirm the Prime Minister's statement that Onik Gasparyan did not propose to halt military operations on the fourth day of the war, nor on November 18.

“We were convinced that the truth would eventually come to light, and waiting a little while would not be a problem. I should also mention a small detail—Onik Gasparyan was the Chief of Staff, and there were technical issues in publishing that. In other words, there was a legal process in which the Chief of Staff was also to participate. The law requires that any document undergo a process before being published. At that time, the Chief of Staff was to participate in that process,” said the National Security Council Secretary.

Addressing Onik Gasparyan's statement that shortly after being appointed as the head of the Armed Forces on June, he presented an analysis of the military-political situation at the NSC meeting and stated that our adversary is not only Azerbaijan but also Turkey, therefore, Armenia cannot effectively withstand the combined military power of these states and it is necessary to direct all political and diplomatic resources towards avoiding war or at least postponing it, Armen Grigoryan first noted that Gasparyan was not a presenter at that meeting, then continued: “What Onik Gasparyan is talking about was in the report on August 21, but there is also a distortion there. For example, he says to take significant military or diplomatic steps; he presented about a 9-10 page report at the August 21 meeting, and not a single word about diplomacy is there. Onik Gasparyan does not say that Turkey could support Azerbaijan; rather, he stated that we will defeat the enemy on the eastern front with the principle of ‘not a step back.’ How does Onik Gasparyan think we can defeat when Turkey is supporting them? The main intent of Onik Gasparyan was that Turkey might attack from the eastern direction, and we published one sentence to clarify that Gasparyan's proposal was not to provide a military or diplomatic solution but to create a militia; it’s publicly visible. If you go back to the actions of August-September, you will see that we began to talk about the creation of a militia very intensively. Onik Gasparyan saw solutions to problems in creating a militia, and our decision was based on his proposal,” Grigoryan added.

When asked by a journalist when Onik Gasparyan first said that the war should be stopped, the Secretary of the National Security Council stated that there was a wide-ranging discussion at the NSC meeting on October 19, 2020, which included the president, the catholicos, and the opposition leaders from the National Assembly, and it was at that meeting that Onik Gasparyan mentioned the idea of stopping the war within 2-3 days. “For the first time based on the reports of the Chief of Staff in the Security Council meeting... let me add something interesting—the thought of stopping the war in 2-3 days, which Onik Gasparyan attributes to September 30, was expressed on October 19, and at that time he even provided examples, mentioned rings, boxing examples, and said that if you fight against someone stronger than you for 23 days, it is hard to continue. That idea was voiced then and a consensus was formed in the Security Council that we would go this way,” Grigoryan noted.

It is worth recalling that on November 17, Onik Gasparyan provided details regarding the war and stated that “on the fourth day of the war, during a meeting of the National Security Council, he presented our losses and the assessment of the situation by the armed forces, noting that measures should be taken within two to three days to stop the war; otherwise, under the conditions of the ongoing intense military operations, our resources would be exhausted in a short time and we would have less favorable conditions for the negotiation process in the coming days.” This statement was only denied months later by the Government, first by the NSC Secretary, then by the Prime Minister. Just days ago, on April 14, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that Onik Gasparyan's assertion has no relation to reality. “On the contrary, at the security council meeting on September 30, it was stated that the adversary had made no progress, the army, and the armed forces are fulfilling their assigned tasks and will carry them out to the end,” Pashinyan declared, emphasizing that the Chief of Staff could not have made such a statement on September 30 because in the report from the NSC meeting held on August 21, he confirmed that on the Artsakh front we could repel the adversary's attack with existing forces and resources, based on the principle of ‘not a single step back’ and defeat their formations,” he said. The next day, the NSC office published certain declassified documents related to Onik Gasparyan's statements.