Armenia’s Government Preparing to Release Non-Classified Sections of 2020 War Report

Armenia’s government is preparing to slowly release the non-classified parts of its long-delayed report on the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. The update was shared by senior lawmaker Andranik Kocharyan in an interview with Hetq as public criticism grows over concerns that the authorities are withholding important information about the country’s mistakes during the war.

Kocharyan leads both the parliament’s defense committee and the special inquiry commission that prepared the report. He explained that the document has first been sent to Armenia’s defense and security bodies. These institutions must review the findings and make their own assessments before any parts are made available to the public.

The inquiry commission was formed in October 2022 to examine Armenia’s political, intelligence, and military decisions during the 44-day war. The final report is based on around 16,000 documents, videos, interrogations, and audio recordings. It looks at issues such as battlefield planning, command readiness, the performance of air-defense units, and coordination between civilian and military leaders. The parliamentary opposition did not take part in the commission’s work, saying the government created the process to “whitewash” its failures.

The completed document, which is about 200 pages long, was immediately placed in a restricted archive in September. Even many lawmakers cannot access it without special permission. Critics argue that this step protects political leaders from facing responsibility for wartime decisions.

Kocharyan said journalists will eventually be allowed to examine the non-classified parts to better understand what went wrong on the battlefield, including during the failed October 6 counteroffensive in southern Nagorno-Karabakh. He noted several key problems, such as the shortage of pilots, difficulties in accessing artillery, a mobilization reserve that was not ready, and conscripts who did not know what their assigned roles were. At the same time, he rejected the popular belief that the failed October operation “broke the army’s backbone.” Instead, he said the real issue was the collapse of defensive lines, which forced untrained units into frontline gaps as “cannon fodder.”

He also said Armenia could have stopped Azerbaijan’s advance in the Jabrayil district if the military had applied the lessons of the 2016 Four-Day War and built a second defensive line in advance.

Kocharyan stated that Armenia’s intelligence picture before the war was incomplete. According to him, the General Staff understood that a large-scale conflict was likely only after intercepting a conversation between Turkish officers in Nakhichevan. Other intelligence sources — including Russia — had told Armenian officials that a major escalation was unlikely. He added that the commission had sent information to prosecutors regarding failures in Armenia’s air-defence systems, but no response has been received in two years.

Eduard Arakelyan, a military expert at the Regional Center for Democracy and Security, said Armenia’s strict handling of the report does not match international democratic standards. He pointed out that countries such as Israel and the United Kingdom have carried out open and independent post-war investigations that help state institutions improve. “Armies and states do not reform by hiding their failures,” he said.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had earlier promised “continuous public communication” about the war and the peace process that followed. However, no such transparency has been provided so far, and many questions about the country’s wartime preparedness and decision-making remain unanswered. —

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