In his speech yesterday, President of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan asked a question: “Was it possible to have ended the war sooner in relatively better conditions and with fewer casualties?” Then, he said that the answer to that question is ‘yes.’ So, yes, it was possible, but he will speak about that at a later point.
Then, Harutyunyan received information from different sources (including from Putin himself) that Pashinyan was offered options to end the war “on better terms and with fewer casualties” in earlier phases, but he rejected those offers. With those rejections, the Prime Minister effectively allowed there to be more casualties.
Now, a question arises: if hundreds, if not thousands of people were killed because of the country’s leader, is he responsible for those deaths, or is he to blame for them? I believe the answer is the latter.
Pashinyan either entirely denies the possibility of saving human lives, or he suggests that, if he did that, people would have still called him a traitor. That prediction is definitely correct, but is it more important to worry about the health, lives, and freedom of people, or to worry about who will saw what, who is saying what now, and who is in power? I believe that one person’s life has more value than the number of people who like, love, praise, and worship Pashinyan (or anyone else). The Prime Minister, it seems, does not think that way.
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Now, it is time to discuss a more difficult issue: did the negotiations that took place one year ago fail, which is why the war ended so terribly? That, of course, demands a highly-detailed analysis, but as an initial source, we must once again consider what the Prime Minister said. On November 3, 2019, he said during a live video, “Now they are spreading rumors that since the government or the Prime Minister, since I personally do not agree to make concessions or- sorry if I am too blunt- do not agree to hand over our lands, it means that the negotiations have entered a deadlock. And they have started to scare people with war. They have specific budgets to carry out that plan. They are spreading propaganda.”
Once again, it seems that propaganda, advertisements, and counter-advertisements are once again more important than the reality. The reality is that the negotiations had entered a deadlock, and war was unavoidable. However, Pashinyan did not accept that at the time.
From the same live: “I can say, as strange as it may seem, that there have been some dynamics in the negotiations process. There is an interesting dynamic in the negotiations process, and I am optimistic that this dynamic will continue,” he said.
The “interesting dynamics” of November 3, 2019, brought about the tragic war of September 27, 2020.
Aram Abrahamyan
