Pashinyan Threatens to Release Nagorno-Karabakh Negotiation Documents by Year-End

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that all documents connected to negotiations over Nagorno-Karabakh will be made public before the end of this year. He made this statement due to renewed criticism from former Armenian leaders over his handling of peace talks with Azerbaijan and the events leading up to the 2020 war.

Over the weekend, former Presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan once again accused Pashinyan of rejecting a realistic peace proposal and disrupting the international mediation process with Azerbaijan. They said this contributed directly to the outbreak of the 44-day war in 2020, during which Armenia suffered a major military and territorial defeat.

The former leaders also claimed that after Pashinyan came to power in 2018 through large-scale protests, he mismanaged the country’s military and damaged Armenia’s relations with key allies, especially Russia.  According to them, the war could have been stopped earlier, which might have left both Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh in a stronger position against Azerbaijan.

In response, Pashinyan wrote on Facebook on November 10 that the statements made by his predecessors “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.’”

“The rights of peoples, historical justice, and similar concepts were merely a smokescreen for the real objective,” he said.

According to the prime minister, what was described as an attempt to “stop the war” was in fact meant to tighten control over Armenia. “The ultimate goal of this process of tightening the leash was to end Armenian statehood,” Pashinyan wrote. “In that scenario, the Karabakh conflict was meant to conclude only with the loss of Armenia’s statehood. Thanks to the sacrifice of our martyrs and the historical intuition of our people in Armenia and Karabakh, the Republic of Armenia managed to escape that scenario.”

The 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh left around 7,000 soldiers dead on both sides. The war ended on November 9, 2020, under a Moscow-brokered ceasefire that largely favored Baku. Azerbaijan regained control over territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh and parts of the region itself. In September 2023, Azerbaijan completed its military takeover of the enclave, leading more than 120,000 Armenians —  the entire indenougous Christian Armenian population — to flee to Armenia.

Kocharyan, Sargsyan, and former President Levon Ter-Petrosyan have all refused Pashinyan’s invitation to hold a live televised debate about the Nagorno-Karabakh negotiations. Instead, they called on him to release all official documents related to the peace process. They argue that these records will show Pashinyan rejected a proposed deal before the 2020 war that would have provided a more secure outcome for Armenia and Karabakh.

The former leaders also accused Pashinyan of refusing a Russian proposal to stop the fighting earlier, which they claim could have saved many lives and prevented further territorial losses.

Pashinyan dismissed these claims, saying the forthcoming publication of all negotiation-related documents will make the facts clear. “The publication of the documents related to the negotiation process will make my arguments more evident,” he wrote.

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