Traitor, Nonetheless Called: Kocharian to Russian Media

“There was an absolute possibility of not losing the war; it could have been stopped. We had such opportunities. This is simply incompetent management of the war. The initiative to cease hostilities was from the President of Russia, if I am not mistaken, on October 19,” said the second President of Armenia, Robert Kocharian, in an interview with RIA Novosti, Sputnik Armenia, and RT.

According to him, the Armenian side rejected this proposal for entirely incomprehensible reasons, arguing that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan would be misunderstood and labeled a traitor. “We lost much more than if we had agreed at that moment. They will call you a traitor anyway, and with much greater enthusiasm,” noted Kocharian.

He attributed the failure in military operations to “the incompetent management of forces.” “Absolute ignorance of what war is, what mobilization is, what the formation of mobilization resources is, what army reinforcement is. Any army, in the case of large-scale war, can withstand only with its human resources and potential for 1-1.5 weeks. The failure here was absolutely complete,” stated Kocharian.

In his opinion, there have been completely incomprehensible decisions, “so incomprehensible that they raise serious doubts about whether there are other arrangements or if there is treason involved.”

“And such doubts remain. They must be dispelled after the elections through a thorough investigation. It is completely unclear how Shushi was surrendered, some incomprehensible decisions related to the defense of Shushi, and it is unclear how Hadrut was surrendered, how Azerbaijani troops, almost without resistance, moved from Hadrut to Shushi. It is a completely incomprehensible story, and answers to these questions need to be provided,” believes the former president.