Former Deputy Minister of Defense of Armenia Artak Zakaryan posted the following on his Facebook page:

“Back on November 12, 2020, I warned Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Armenia Onik Gasparyan that after a while Nikol [Nikol Pashinyan] will throw the whole blame for the war on him. At the time, Gasparyan didn’t accept this, better yet, he didn’t believe me and said he and the other army generals are ready to be awarded and be brought to justice.

Yesterday Nikol, through former Secretary of the Security Council of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Samvel Babayan, accused the army’s command and General Staff on Armenian Public Television. Moreover, he blamed them for everything.

The same day, Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia Armen Grigoryan sharply refuted the facts and said Nikol wasn’t the Commander-in-Chief during the war.

According to Nikol, he isn’t to blame for anything and is a saint and that everyone else is to blame. These are the fruits of populism.

Get ready to be ‘sentenced’, army generals and officers. As a result of all this, it will turn out that you and all former army generals and ministers are the only ones to blame for the incited war and embarrassing defeat.

Many people who have a glorious past in the military and are dedicated to homeland defense have been criticized for the past three years. Now it turns out that they are traitors and saboteurs and must be brought to justice. What is ridiculous is that all this is due to the whim of one person.

P.S.: One may ask what I was doing in the office of the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. At Mr. Gasparyan’s invitation (I think Nikol knew about it), we were discussing the situation that had been created and the ways to get out of it. I had proposed to have Nikol, who was hiding in bunkers, to personally hold a meeting with the representatives of all political parties, answer everyone’s questions and immediately resign.”