Armenia's ex-defence minister hit back at Pashinyan’s leadership Another one from the losing clan

The Karabakh clan continues to make waves in the Armenian media. Just as readers were recovering from the cringeworthy revelations of Vartan Oskanian, former Armenian Defence Minister and leader of the "Armenia" parliamentary faction, Seyran Ohanyan, hobbled in to lend his support.

The limping Seyran stated that it was the actions of the current Armenian leadership that led to the war in Karabakh, as they destroyed the diplomatic legacy and demonstrated to Azerbaijan the weakness and ineptitude of the government in Yerevan. According to Ohanyan, Nikol Pashinyan's government has dismantled everything accumulated in the negotiation process over the past 30 years, including the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries.

Calling it a "diplomatic legacy" is an overstatement. In our previous piece on Vartan Oskanian's remarks, we already assessed this so-called legacy. There was no legacy to speak of — this is merely a fantasy of the Karabakh clan. Baku rejected any plans that did not recognise Azerbaijan's territorial integrity. At the same time, Armenians in the Karabakh region were offered the highest possible status of autonomy within Azerbaijan, a proposal that was consistently and arrogantly rejected in Yerevan.

As a result, if anything was accumulated, it was Baku's frustration with the arrogant stubbornness of the Karabakh rulers, and its realisation that the only way to return Karabakh was through force. Additionally, we must add to this the military skills and armament accumulated by the Azerbaijani army, which ultimately helped restore justice.

Meanwhile, Ohanyan also accused the Armenian authorities of deliberately escalating tensions on the border, including the "events in Tavush" (referring to the Armenian provocation in the Tovuz direction in the summer of 2020 — Ed.), which, according to him, finally convinced Baku of the possibility of solving the conflict through military means. "Azerbaijan realised that it was dealing with an inadequate government and incompetent leadership, incapable of defending itself or negotiating," Ohanyan emphasised.

Not exactly. If Ohanyan is referring to a "reconnaissance in force," then Baku conducted it not in the summer of 2020, but in April 2016, when Armenia was led by the Karabakh clan's representative, Serzh Sargsyan. Interestingly, the April battles were a "reconnaissance in force" not only for Azerbaijan but also for Sargsyan himself, who, having "scouted" the futility of resistance in the upcoming war, hastily retreated from the political scene, ceding power to the "revolutionary movement" (or perhaps even orchestrating it).

And finally, according to Ohanyan, "with political will and organisation, Armenia and Artsakh could have at least stopped the enemy's advance in the mountainous forested areas." "But instead of defending, the authorities engaged in provocations and inaction," he concluded.

This comment from Ohanyan sounds particularly ironic given that the so-called "impregnable" defensive line was named after him. As is well-known, part of this line did not even run through mountainous or forested terrain but through mixed or even entirely flat areas, which the Azerbaijani army easily breached in several places, including in flatland regions.

If Ohanyan particularly wants to talk about the mountainous forested areas, it’s worth reminding him that even in those regions, Azerbaijan’s victory was achieved thanks to the high skill and heroism of Azerbaijani soldiers, rather than the mistakes of the Armenian military. Moreover, the first precedent for breaking through mountainous forested areas occurred back in April 2016 at Lala-Tepe, during the time the Karabakh clan was in power in Armenia.

It’s no wonder, anticipating the boastful rhetoric of Kocharyan, Sargsyan, and their ilk, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said back in November 2020: "We have destroyed the Kocharyan-Sargsyan Army. They are the ones that have destroyed our lands. This time these cowards could not even stick their noses into the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Where is your heroism? The fake "hero" medals you have put on your chests – get rid of that metal scrap and throw them into the trashcan - we have defeated you. Pashinyan is nobody. Kocharyan and Sargsyan, the Azerbaijani people's executioners, the slaughterers of Khojaly, we have defeated you, we have destroyed your Army."

Perhaps these words of President Aliyev should be reminded to Armenian society more often.