The war of words between Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan and former Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrosyan as to who is responsible for the loss of Artsakh heated up again this week as Armenia marks its independence anniversary.

Ter-Petrosyan, a one-time political mentor of Pashinyan, has accused him of rejecting peace proposals, of not accepting a Russian proposal to end the war earlier, and depopulating Artsakh.

“Somehow, the anniversary of independence is not Pashinyan’s holiday. He hates that independence because it wasn’t he who brought it, but others,” Ter-Petrosyan wrote in a Facebook post on September 22.

Ter-Petrosyan went so far as claiming that Pashinyan “has secured his honorable place on the memorial plaque of notorious Armenian traitors.”

Pashinyan, in a Facebook post later that same day, boasted that his popularity has surged since he has brought peace to Armenia and that his predecessors can’t stomach the truth.

Today, Pashinyan went on the attack, accusing the three former presidents of dragging the country into a war and sending citizens of Armenia to military service in Armenia.

Pashinyan also noted that none of his predecessors had received the “people’s vote of confidence”.

“If you brought victory to the people, can you explain why you have been rigging the elections since 1996? How could the people not elect the leaders who brought them victory? How? ” Pashinyan wrote today.

During a 2019 rally in Stepanakert, the Artsakh capital, Pashinyan boasted “Artsakh is Armenia, period." Davit Tonoyan, Pashinyan’s defense minister in 2019, declared the “new war, new territories" doctrine that was seen by many as a shift of Armenia’s military posture at the time.

The mutual recriminations over which Armenian leader fumbled the diplomatic ball over Artsakh aren’t new.

In December 2020, a month after Azerbaijan recaptured huge swaths of the then self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, Pashinyan said his government hadn’t failed diplomatically regarding the Karabakh issue but rather failed to overcome the burden of diplomatic failures of the past 20-25 years.

In 2022, Pashinyan stated that previous governments "shot us in the foot" by accepting the so-called Madrid Principles, which he says delegitimized Nagorno-Karabakh's independence.

In 2024, after the fall of Artsakh, Pashinyan accused previous leaders of failing to inform the Armenian public that all peace proposals since 1994 had envisioned Nagorno-Karabakh's return to Azerbaijan.

The offices of former Armenian presidents Robert Kocharyan, Serzh Sargsyan, and Ter-Petrosyan issued a joint response, accusing Pashinyan of distorting the history of negotiations mediated by the United States, Russia, and France. They argued that he was deflecting blame for the 2020 war and Azerbaijan’s subsequent control of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Pashinyan then invited the former Armenian leaders to a televised debate on the issue. They declined the invitation.