Prague statements verdict for Nagorno-Karabakh - Robert Kocharyan

ArmInfo. The people of Armenia and Artsakh have paid a very high price for the mistakes of  the Armenian authorities. This was stated at a press conference on February 17 by the second President of the Republic of Armenia Robert Kocharyan. 

According to him, the surrender of Artsakh took place in two stages -  the first during 2018-2020, and the second - after the 2020 war. At  the first stage, the current Prime Minister of the Republic of  Armenia Nikol Pashinyan announced that he was starting the  negotiation process from scratch, having rejected in 2018 a very  interesting proposal from the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs on the  settlement of the Nagorno- Karabakh conflict. "His statements then,  especially addressed to the OSCE Minsk Group, boiled down to the fact  that I will negotiate on whatever I want. Thus, the negotiation  process was brought to a dead end.  After that, he made the statement  that Artsakh is Armenia, period, which involuntarily suggested that  if Artsakh is Armenia, then what is there to negotiate about," Robert  Kocharyan said, adding that this statement essentially became a call  for war. It inevitably led to war. Meanwhile, back in 2018, a very  interesting proposal was received from the OSCE Minsk Group  co-chairs, on which negotiations could be held. "Nevertheless, the  adamant Rambo became a geopolitical Gikor after the defeat in the  war.  Meanwhile, accepting the proposals of the co-chairs and holding  active negotiations would have made it possible to avoid military  action," the second president of the Republic of Armenia said.

In his opinion, the reason for all the ongoing processes was the  arrogance of the country's authorities and the lack of desire to  calculate the steps, at least one or two.

"The art of diplomacy is not banging your head against a cast-iron  wall, but looking for a door in this wall," Robert Kocharyan stated,  pointing to the second gross mistake that occurred in Prague. The  second president recalled that with his statement recognizing Artsakh  as part of the territory of Azerbaijan, the Prime Minister of the  Republic of Armenia, in fact, passed a sentence on Nagorno-Karabakh.

Robert Kocharyan noted that at one point, when the Russian Federation  was failing in Ukraine, the Armenian authorities considered it a  convenient moment to "jump off the train", practically nullifying the  peacekeeping mandate on the part of Moscow. Having signed a  trilateral statement on November 9, 2020, Yerevan considered that it  could now wash its hands, shifting all responsibility to the Russian  Federation.  "But this is not how problems in international issues  are solved. If someone thinks that Russia can be ignored, then they  are deeply mistaken," said the second president of the Republic of  Armenia.

He noted that in Armenia it is customary to blame Russia for not  fulfilling its obligations. However, from the point of view of the  Russian Federation, what was happening in Karabakh could only be  stopped by forceful intervention, but Moscow did not do this at the  very moment when its ally was switching from one camp to another.  "This was the decisive factor, regardless of what the reality was,"  said the second president of the Republic of Armenia.