Ex-president slams Pashinyan’s statements on Artsakh

PanARMENIAN.Net - Former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan said it is absurd to claim that Armenia recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan because Russia did so earlier.

Speaking on the Big Politics podcast, Kocharyan addressed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s recent statement.

“No country recognized Artsakh’s independence, but they did recognize the right of the people of Artsakh to self-determination. Russia, France, and the U.S. did not question Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, but as OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, they recognized that right. To tell Russia, ‘you recognized it, so did I,’ is completely absurd. This is shifting one’s own mistakes onto others. The same could be said about France,” Kocharyan said.

On April 1, during a meeting with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin, Pashinyan stated: “Yes, we recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, but we did so only after the top leadership of the Russian Federation publicly stated this twice, and you remember we have discussed this many times. We have also never concealed our issues with the CSTO, because in 2022, we had a specific situation.”