The former Prime Minister of RA Vazgen Manukyan issued a statement in which it said:
“What is happening to us now is a deeply elaborated conspiracy directed against our people. When organizing that conspiracy, they used the natural desire of our people to live in a fair country and in peaceful conditions.
In fact, the “peace” agreement, the necessity of which many foreign powers are shouting about, will be the most devastating blow to our people.
About enclaves: the existence of enclaves was not fixed by any law of the Soviet Union. They were once given to Azerbaijan with the consent of the local authorities, therefore they do not have any legal force, that is, they are our territories also de jure.
If the enclaves are given to Azerbaijan, it means giving the enemy the best opportunities and creating a temptation to continue the war from within the territory of Armenia. That agreement will not become a peace agreement, but a war agreement.
As for Artsakh, not only is the idea that “let’s get rid of Artsakh and live in peace” absurd, but the issue also has a moral aspect. Show me a case in world history where a nation holds a part of its hundreds of thousands hostage (knowing that they will be massacred and displaced) in the vain hope that they will live well. Our people will not live well, and that stigma will not be erased from us for thousands of years. We will not respect ourselves, the next generations will spit in our face. We make ourselves and our generations unhappy and humiliated by committing an immoral step and national betrayal, getting war and not peace in return.
Only the fact that Armenia, regardless of its territorial integrity, does not declare the acceptance of the right to self-determination and independence of the Artsakh people and to contribute to the realization of that right by all political means, already humiliates us in the eyes of many peoples of the world. How can one live like this?
In fact, someone came and destroyed our history of thousands of years, a part of the people does not understand this, hoping that everything will be fine in the end, and a part of the people is making efforts to change all this, but they cannot.
In such a situation, the military, the power structures, whose main goal is to protect the state, have a very important role.
I specifically appeal to our power structures: you did not swear to protect Nikol Pashinyan, you swore to protect the Motherland, the state, the Constitution and state laws. What Nikol Pashinyan is doing and wants to do, first of all, contradicts our Constitution and laws, therefore Nikol Pashinyan is no longer legitimate. With his statements, his actions, and later also with his signature, he becomes a state criminal, and by protecting a state criminal, you break your oath, which is also a state crime.
I call on the power structures to carefully monitor what is happening in our country and prevent state crime in time, being ready to join the large part of the people that resists the implementation of national and state crime and tries to prevent national disaster and disgrace.”