Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has announced that documents related to negotiations over the Nagorno-Karabakh issue will be made public before the end of the year, responding to criticism from his predecessors over his handling of the talks and the 2020 war with Azerbaijan. In separate interviews over the weekend, former Presidents Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian again accused Pashinian of rejecting a viable peace plan and derailing internationally mediated talks with Azerbaijan. They claimed this was one of the major factors that led to the 2020 war, in which the Armenian side suffered a defeat. The two former leaders also alleged that, after coming to power through mass street protests in 2018, Pashinian mishandled army affairs and relations with Armenia’s allies, notably Russia. Both said the 44-day war could have been stopped earlier, which, they argued, would have put Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia in a much better position vis-à-vis Azerbaijan. In a Facebook post on November 10, Pashinian said the remarks by Kocharian and Sarkisian “once again confirm that the Karabakh issue was used by certain forces as a rope to tie the Republic of Armenia to the ‘nearest tree.’”
