Razm.info website coordinator and military expert Karen Vrtanesyan is convinced that there was no decision to start a war against Armenia in April-May 2018. “Azerbaijan has always been preparing for war. We have been talking about that since 2010. It’s another question of if Azerbaijan will take that step or not? That depended on us and the international situation. If it knows that it cannot win this war, and Ilham Aliyev has a lot to lose, of course, they will not start one. In April-May 2018, a chaotic situation was created in Armenia, and if Azerbaijan had a clear decision to start a war, it would have started right then,” he said on October 29 during the “Lost Victory: Betrayal or Illiteracy” conference.
According to Karen Vrtanesyan, the biggest period of probability for Azerbaijan to start a war was May 5, 2018, when Nikol Pashinyan became Prime Minister, as Azerbaijan had acted in the Nakhichevan sector in those days and remained unpunished. If there was moderate resistance from the Armenian side, they could not, because in the middle of the two Armenian positions, on the hill, the Azeris took a position. It was possible only in the conditions of chaos that reigned in Armenia at that time. However, apart from that, Azerbaijan did not take any other step. They also did not understand well what was happening in Armenia; they were analyzing. “It seems to me that the Azerbaijanis took the arm during the Dushanbe meeting. I think Aliyev, who has been involved in international politics for a long time, has already understood who he is dealing with by exchanging a few sentences,” said Karen Vrtanesyan, adding that experts understood that Azerbaijan would use the ceasefire agreement at its border to get stronger, and it happened.
“For several months, the Azerbaijanis have been actively working on fortifications, which they could not do before because they would hit their equipment. When they did, they finished, I think in February 2019, they started accusing Armenia of provocations again, and the head of the General Staff started threatening. That was the first signal that the Dushanbe agreement had ended.” According to Karen Vrtanesyan, the decision to go to war in Azerbaijan was made not immediately, but gradually, seeing the situation in the public administration system in Armenia, how that system responds to this or that crisis. Corps commanders and Chiefs of General Staff began to change in the RA and Defense Army, and when we came to the war, in 2.5 years, there was the third Chief of General Staff in Armenia, the third Commander of the Defense Army, and the number of deputies was innumerable.
Vrtanesyan noted that the two former Chiefs of General Staff and the commanders of the Defense Army came with a rotation system and knew the system very well, had connections with people, and the last commander of the Defense Army did not rotate and should not have held that position. “Azerbaijan clearly saw that the defense system was collapsing.”
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Referring to the military operations of July 2020, Karen Vrtanesyan mentioned, “Azerbaijan and Turkey in 2019 made a decision to start a war and a clear plan from the middle. The July events were out of that plan, they were not fully prepared, but they also tried to check how the new Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia is able to “play” abroad, in crisis conditions. During the July events, we succeeded on the front, but in the international arena, Armenia’s diplomacy worked very badly.” According to the expert, Azerbaijan would not have gone to war if there was no “ruined” situation in Armenia’s public administration and defense system. He claims that this war could have been avoided if the situation inside Armenia had not existed, and even on September 30, Armenia would have had a chance to win the war, if not a draw, because even as a result of such a disgraceful government, Azerbaijan took 44 days to achieve something.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
