“Fake Interview”: What’s Behind Sargsyan’s Rhetoric and the Meeting at the Marriott?
Journalist Boris Murazi harshly criticized Serzh Sargsyan’s interview on the Imnemnimi podcast, calling it a collection of unreliable claims and cynicism that crossed every possible red line.
Murazi focused in particular on Sargsyan’s response to the question about his well-known meeting with Nikol Pashinyan at the Marriott Hotel. The former president said:
“I wanted to make sure that that man was capable of bloodshed. I understood that in a few moments.”
Murazi questions the sincerity of this explanation:
- Why would Sargsyan need to be physically present to determine whether Pashinyan was “ready to shed blood”? Wouldn’t such assessments fall to the relevant agencies?
- How is it possible that a president—who commanded the full arsenal of law-enforcement and security bodies (the Prosecutor’s Office, the Police, the National Security Service, the Army) —had not already analyzed his political opponent’s intentions?
- And why was a personal meeting required to “test” Pashinyan, effectively placing Sargsyan on equal footing with him?
According to Murazi, a close analysis of those days reveals a fundamentally different reason for the meeting:
It was initiated by Pashinyan. The meeting took place on his terms - at the venue, with the agenda, and in the format he dictated. This instantly elevated the status of an opposition figure who had received only 7% of the vote in the 2017 elections.
A symbolic gesture. By appearing at the Marriott, Sargsyan effectively acknowledged Pashinyan’s 7% support as politically equal to his own position as prime minister. This became a turning point in recasting Pashinyan’s image from that of a “marginal parliamentarian” to that of a national leader.
In analyzing Sargsyan’s account of his meeting with Nikol Pashinyan, experts of the Public Tribunal see an attempt to evade an impartial reckoning with the dramatic events of 2018, and a deliberate effort to manipulate the past for current political purposes, including the repair of his severely damaged political rating.
