Human rights activist: Armenia must accept its defeat

Armenian human rights activist Vardan Harutyunyan has said that after the 44-day second Karabakh war and crushing defeat, the Armenian side and authorities were unable to correctly understand, assess the situation and take the right steps.

Harutyunyan made these remarks during a conversation on the Armenian “A1+” TV channel, Caliber.Az reports.

“Throughout the entire process, at least until the last period, even in the middle of this year, Armenia pinned hope in Russia. However, it was impossible to rely only on Russia. Besides me, many people stressed this because the 44-day war showed that Russia is not our ally. The authorities did not hear this. As a result, we face such a situation today,” the human rights activist noted.

“As for the three principles of the peace treaty voiced by the Armenian authorities, I can say that initially, there were such principles. Moreover, there were the rights and security of the Karabakh Armenians. That is, if the Armenian authorities were far-sighted, if the “Artsakh” authorities were far-sighted and realistic, and could understand and correctly assess the situation, they would negotiate with the Azerbaijanis,” Harutyunyan said.

The human rights activist added that unfortunately, Samvel Babayan was the only one who supported negotiations.

“However, the Armenian authorities and the “Artsakh” side did not enter into negotiations. The “Artsakh” side mainly opposed the negotiations after Russian-Armenian billionaire and philanthropist Ruben Vardanyan’s arrival in Karabakh. Azerbaijan’s latest actions were unexpected for everyone, even for the Karabakh Armenians, who did not go to negotiations and thought that Azerbaijan would not take the last step,” he said.

“As for integration, I would like to say that if you are already defeated, then you must admit your defeat, accept your defeat, and act based on your defeat. You're defeated and try to act like it did not happen. You have lost everything. We lost everything because we did not admit defeat in 2020. We did not admit our defeat and will not admit it. We lost but continued talking or using the ideas we had until August 2020. We did not understand or feel our defeat. That’s why we have such a situation today,” the human rights activist said.