Azerbaijani army units redeployed on March 30 to more parts of the Lachin district sandwiched between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, completing a change in the route of the Lachin corridor which began in August 2022. Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) said hours later that they advanced up to 300 meters into Armenian territory at five border locations adjacent to the village of Tegh.
As a result, Tegh lost a large part of its agricultural land and pastures, according to local government officials and farmers. Tensions around the village escalated on April 11 into a skirmish between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces which left at least seven soldiers from both sides dead.
The Armenian opposition blamed Pashinian for the fresh territorial gains made by Azerbaijan. Opposition leaders said he should have ordered the Armenian army or border guards to take up positions along the Armenian side of the Tegh border section ahead of the Azerbaijani advance.
Pashinian sought to shift the blame onto other Armenian officials. “Concrete individuals were given concrete instructions and they failed to carry out those instructions,” he said on April 12.
The premier did not name any of them. He sacked the commander of Armenia’s Border Guard Troops, Colonel Arman Maralchian, the same day.
Two days later, military investigators launched an inquiry into possible “negligence” by military officers or other security personnel, a crime punishable by between four and eight years’ imprisonment.
In a statement to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, the Office of the Prosecutor-General said on Tuesday that they have not charged anyone so far. The probe is continuing, the office said without giving further details.
Opposition leaders also hold Pashinian responsible for larger swathes of Armenian territory occupied by Azerbaijan in September 2022 and May 2021. They regularly accuse him of incompetence and failure to rebuild Armenia’s armed forces after the 2020 war in Karabakh. Pashinian blames the country’s former governments for its continuing security woes.