Pashinyan denies ex-army chief’s claim on wartime briefing about need to "stop war in 2-3 days"

YEREVAN, APRIL 14, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is denying former army chief General Onik Gasparyan’s statement who claimed that during the September 30, 2020 Security Council meeting he - then in office - had advised the Prime Minister that the situation required actions for stopping the war within 2-3 days.

“On November 17th, 2020, then-Chief of General Staff Onik Gasparyan stated that on the fourth day of the war, during the Security Council meeting he had briefed on our losses, and said that he had stated that it was necessary to take actions in 2 or 3 days for stopping the war. I’d like to responsibly and officially say for the record here that this part of his statement has nothing to do with reality,” Pashinyan told lawmakers in parliament during the April 14 session. The Chief of General Staff did not say such thing, this is recorded officially, including by an audio recording. On the contrary, he had said that the adversary did not have any advancement, and that our army was fulfilling its mission and will continue doing so until the end.”

According to the Prime Minister, the Chief of General Staff Gasparyan had said during the Security Council meeting that “In the direction of Artsakh, with our existing forces and means we can repel, thwart the adversary’s attack and destroy its formations by the “not a single step back” principle.”

However,Pashinyan added that this doesn't mean that his administration was not taking actions to immediately achieve a ceasefire.Pashinyan mentioned the process whereby three different ceasefires during the war were achieved through mediators, but failed to hold. Minutes after the ceasefires were coming into force, the Azeri military was violating it.

General Gasparyan was dismissed as Chief of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces on March 10, 2021.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan