During today’s press conference, the second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan said that he had revealed some of the problems of the 44-day war of 2020․ “Firstly, the absence of a border with Russia showed the possible limits of Russia’s intervention and support. There is still no answer as to why Georgia’s airspace was closed for military cargo transportation. Did our authorities knew beforehand that this territory could be closed or did they not, and was it a surprise for them? There is still no answer as to why Iran’s air territory was also closed during the first two weeks of the war, and these two factors had a significant impact on the results of the war, this is also a fact.”
According to Kocharyan, the second problem was Russia being mediator in the Karabakh settlement process, which significantly limited Russia’s freedom to take steps. And the third problem that was revealed during this war, according to Kocharyan, was a sharp increase in the role of Turkey in the South Caucasus. “Now let’s consider these three components in one context. Of course, the situation is sad, and I don’t see any serious steps that will try to neutralize, change this situation and neutralize these challenges. In fact, we are in a new situation, and this new situation requires certain actions.”
He noted that in this situation they propose to urgently restore the combat capability of the army, raise it to a new level, create strategic stocks of weapons and ammunition, which will allow the armed forces to function autonomously for at least six months.
According to Kocharyan, it’s impossible to do all this on our own․ “We need to understand to what extent Russia is ready to provide assistance and cooperation for Armenia. I’m sure that it is possible, I doubt that there are such signals and such a request from our side.”
The next issue, according to the Second President, is the problem of airspace․ “Can we have a full-fledged air blockade in the future, or is it just some episode that we are able to fix? I’m talking about the airspace of Georgia,” Kocharyan said, noting that during his presidency there were no such problems and he didn’t imagine that it was possible to achieve such relations with Georgia.
“Turkey will stop considering us as an obstacle to its programs only in one case, if it has a total influence on our political processes, on our politics. This assumes that Turkey will have a dominant position in our economy, and Turkey should have a big influence on our political elite. When is it possible? When the Russian presence here will begin to cease and begin to be replaced by Turkish influence, and it’s possible if Armenia abandons Karabakh. Comparing all the processes that I see today, Armenia is following this path,” Robert Kocharyan said.
