MP Tigran Abrahamyan of the opposition Pativ Unem faction has called the latest statements of Tiran Khachatryan, a former chief of the Armenian military’s General Staff, on the 2020 Artsakh war “remarkable”.

“Former Deputy Chief of the General Staff Tiran Khachatryan has made quite remarkable statements, which reveal new details about the 44-day war, confirming the existing suspicions,” he wrote on Facebook on Monday.

The lawmaker highlighted that General Khachatryan held a top position during the war, thus possessing military information which a “small number of people” had access to.

“In an interview with 168.am, the latter has confirmed that former General Staff Chief Onik Gasparyan ordered the army corps and the Artsakh Defense Army to go on the defensive, but there were some personnel who was not fully prepared for the enemy attacks, hinting at the Defense Army,” Abrahamyan said.

“Moreover, Khachatryan claims that before the war there was an order from the Chief of the General Staff to be at the defense points, but former Defense Army Commander Jalal Harutyunyan was not there when the war broke out.

“The main reason of our defeat in the war was that despite reliable data on the outbreak of hostilities (they say that the intelligence had even revealed the exact day of the war outbreak), the armed forces, particularly the Defense Army, were not fully deployed, carrying out only certain reinforcements, which in such circumstances was extremely inadequate.

“Moreover, the intelligence reportedly made it clear that the main target of the offensive would be Artsakh, thus the Armenian army corps not only took appropriate measures to put troops on high alert, but also had time to redeploy the ammunition bases, which was not the case with the Defense Army, the bases of which were hit by Azerbaijani forces immediately after the start of the war,” the MP said.