During an Armenia Alliance campaign rally in Goris today, former Chief of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces Yuri Khachaturov said that flagrant mistakes led to the Armenian defeat in last year’s Karabakh war.

Khachaturov, a vocal critic of the Pashinyan government, said that the Artsakh Defense Army was never fully prepared for the war.

“The main mistake was that the Defense Army was not brought to full combat readiness. If that were the case, if the troops occupied their positions, if there were no troops left in the barracks and no military equipment remained in the car parks, the beginning of the war would have been completely different,” he argued.

Khachaturov, who also served as CSTO Secretary General, before Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan relieved him of his duties in 2018, accused the Pashinyan government of weakening the army since the 2018 Velvet Revolution.

Khachaturov said that even in its weakened condition the army could have won the war or, in the worst-case scenario, could have stopped Azerbaijani armed forces far beyond the borders of Armenia, and not near the Syunik region, if the correct military decisions were made.

He concluded his remarks by saying that the Armenia Alliance will win this month’s snap parliamentary election and that Armenia will have a new government.

The Hayastan (Armenia) Alliance, led by former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, is comprised of the ARF and the Reborn Armenia Party.

P.S. In July 2018, Armenia’s Special Investigative Service (SIS) charged Yuri Khachaturov with “usurping state power” during the March 1-2, 2008 public protests in Yerevan that claimed the lives of ten people. Khachaturov was Armenia's Deputy Minister of Defense at the time of mass demonstrations in the Armenian capital following the February 2008 presidential election that resulted in Serzh Sargsyan replacing outgoing Robert Kocharyan. The charges were dropped in April of this year after Armenia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the Criminal Code article in question (Article 300.1) runs counter to two articles of the constitution. Co-defendants in the case were former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan and then Chief of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces Seyran Ohanyan.