Putin again claimed last week that Russian peacekeepers could not have thwarted the offensive because Pashinian had downgraded their mandate by recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh during Western-mediated talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held in October 2022 and May 2023.
“It’s not we who abandoned Karabakh. It’s Armenia that recognized Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan,” he told a year-end news conference in Moscow.
Pashinian hit back at Putin in an interview with Armenian Public Television aired late on Tuesday. He said that the Russian leader himself recognized Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan shortly after brokering a ceasefire agreement that stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
“Those statements were public and are still available on social media, if I’m not mistaken,” said Pashinian.
He went on to deplore Russia’s “zero reaction” to Azerbaijan’s subsequent attacks on Armenian border areas and military aid requested by Yerevan. He noted that one of the Azerbaijani military operations launched in the run-up to Armenia’s June 2021 general elections coincided with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to the region.
“There was a high probability that the Armenian government would react differently [to that assault,] as a result of which the elections would not have taken place in Armenia, which would have essentially meant the dissolution of the Republic of Armenia. We realized that there is an attempt to dissolve Armenia,” Pashinian alleged, implicitly pointing the finger at Moscow.
Addressing the European Parliament in October this year, the Armenian premier accused Moscow of using the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict to try to topple him. A Russian government source responded by accusing him of helping the West “turn Armenia into another Ukraine.”
The Azerbaijani takeover of Karabakh added to unprecedented tensions between Moscow and Yerevan. Pashinian and other senior Armenian officials have since boycotted meetings of their counterparts from other ex-Soviet states making up Russian-led organizations. They have sought instead closer relations with the United States and the European Union. The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly accused Pashinian of systematically “destroying” Russian-Armenian relations.
Armenia’s leading opposition groups also hold Pashinian responsible for the fall of Karabakh, saying that he precipitated it with his decision to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over the territory. They staged street protests in Yerevan and tried unsuccessfully to topple him last year after he pledged to “lower the bar” on Karabakh’s status acceptable to Armenia.
Pashinian on Tuesday again blamed Armenia’s former governments for the restoration of Azerbaijani control over Karabakh. And he gave more indications that the Karabakh issue is closed for his administration.
“As I said, I am the prime minister of Armenia and must advance Armenia’s national interests,” he told the government-controlled TV channel.
Artur Khachatrian, an opposition parliamentarian, countered on Wednesday that Pashinian had made diametrically opposite statements on Karabakh before the 2020 war.
“When was he lying: yesterday or in June 2020? Yesterday or in Stepanakert’s Renaissance Square where he said [in 2019] that ‘Artsakh is Armenia, period,’ that Armenia is the guarantor of Artsakh’s security and that Artsakh will never be part of Azerbaijan?” Khachatrian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.