Robert Kocharian: The current authorities consciously or  unconsciously did everything to make this war inevitable

ArmInfo. The acting authorities, consciously or not consciously, did everything to make this war inevitable. A similar opinion was expressed by the second  president of Armenia, Robert Kocharian, in an interview with Channel  5, stating that the truth about how much it was realized or not will  be possible to find out only after the current authorities leave.

He added that the Armenian authorities created such a situation that  Azerbaijan would not have a chance to diplomatically settle the  Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. With their political line, the slogan  "Karabakh is Armenia, period!" The authorities have transferred the  essence of the conflict from the plane of the principle of the right  of nations to self-determination to the plane of the principle of  inviolability of borders.  By doing this, they actually froze the  negotiation process and confused international mediators. As a  result, only the war remained. Kocharian believes that these  groundless and empty statements by the Armenian leadership, in turn,  prompted Baku to strengthen military-political relations with Ankara.

The second President of the Republic of Armenia believes that one of  the conflicting parties can behave in such a way when he absolutely  does not care about the consequences and he has the proper resources  and strength for this - finances, weapons, GDP, etc., although in the  Armenian case it was not this way.  At the same time, Kocharian is  convinced that it was possible to have completely different results  in this war.

, - said Kocharyan. The  second president of Armenia stressed that over the past 2.5 years,  this government did not even try to completely close the sky, which  was possible. "For example, instead of allocating $ 120 million for  bonuses to officials, it was possible to buy systems to neutralize  the work of drones or to purchase the TOP system, which is also  effective in the fight against drones. Instead, they bought SU-30 SM  fighters, and even without missiles, which never made a single  sortie. And the missiles were not purchased, since the Russian side  does not sell them to other states. Was bought scrap metal 30-40  years ago - the Osa-OKA systems, which simply did not work. Kocharian  called this deal a corruption one. Agreements were previously reached  with the Russian side on the acquisition of the TOP, but by the  decision of one person - the prime minister, everything was changed.  The procurement plan has been changed. And, as a result, the sky was  not closed, "Kocharyan said.

Another mistake in this war, the second president considers the  decision to end mobilization, and the replacement of the regular army  with volunteer units. "I was in Nagorno-Karabakh, I understood that  something was wrong, and only recently learned the details. It's a  shame. We won the 1992-94 war thanks to the fact that a year earlier  we switched to the formation of a regular army. And after 27 years,  everything is twisted back. This is how incompetent you need to be,  far from the army, what kind of thinking a supreme commander-in-chief  needs to have in order to turn everything over, twist it back, how  far you need to be far from security issues in order to allow such  stupidity. Volunteer units play an important role, but they should  complement the regular army, not replace it. It was a fatal mistake -  one of the reasons for such an outcome in this war, "the second  president believes.  At the same time, he stated that basically the  southern and northern flanks could not withstand, but if in the north  it was still possible to stop and restore positions, then in the  south only in a section of 14 km they could not withstand, and the  Armed Forces of Azerbaijan developed this advantage and went forward  to this site, capturing more and more territories. According to him,  the Armenian side in the south failed to build a new line of defense  as a result of a very dubious military operation, which was still  dubious for many Armenian military at that time, and which Prime  Minister Pashinyan spoke about with enthusiasm in an interview with  RBR on October 7. According to Kocharyan, because of this operation,  proposed by Pashinyan personally, the army corps of the regiment from  Stepanakert was destroyed, and after that it was not possible to  build a reliable defense line, due to the lack of proper force in  this direction.