Armenia’s second President Robert Kocharyan says the defeat in the recent 44-day war in Artsakh seems to have been “planned”.
At a meeting with his supporters on April 26, he said many questions about the war will get answers after the snap parliamentary elections in June.
“I got the impression that it was a planned defeat. We need to understand what the motivation was, who planned it and who carried out this planned defeat,” he said.
Kocharyan believes Armenia should not have suffered a defeat in the war. He noted that on the 3rd or 4th day of the war he saw that there was a serious problem.
“The state did not take over the management of the war. This is the biggest problem. No army can fight for more than a week. As a matter of fact, in the event of such wars the army, according to estimates, can hold out for 5-7 days. During this time, the replenishment of the army begins. And the first big problem was this; the army took the first big blow, but it was necessary to carry out other processes to continue it; state efforts, rear work, replenishment of the army, mobilization, competent resource management … This simply did not happen,” the ex-president.
According to him, in the first 4-5 days of the war, Armenia was not in a bad situation.
“The enemy [Azerbaijan] had advanced some 3-4 km in the south and nearly 5 km in the north. After that, the state had to enter the game with might and main, but it did not and the retreat began. At the moment I do not have answers to many questions, I think we will receive answers after June 21,” Kocharyan emphasized.