RIA Novosti: Armenia’s First President Accuses Pashinyan of Betraying the Nation
22.09.2025. RIA Novosti reports::
Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the first President of Armenia, has accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of betraying the Armenian people, saying he has earned a place on the “memorial wall of national traitors.”
According to Ter-Petrosyan, Pashinyan’s 2019 declaration that “Artsakh is Armenia” provoked the war with Azerbaijan and ultimately led to Armenia’s crushing defeat.
He also criticized the Prime Minister for “recklessly rejecting” a ceasefire proposal from Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2020 Karabakh conflict. As a result, Ter-Petrosyan claims, Pashinyan’s policies have led to the forced displacement of the Armenian population of Karabakh, the imprisonment of Karabakh’s leadership in Azerbaijan, and ongoing issues faced by displaced Armenians, many of whom may now be compelled to leave Armenia altogether.
The former president also criticized Pashinyan for what he described as “cynically declaring on a daily basis that he has brought peace to the Armenian people,” while expecting and even demanding gratitude, and reacting with “spiteful remarks” when that gratitude is not expressed.
“One can state with certainty that Pashinyan has already earned his ‘honorable’ place on the memorial board of known traitors to the Armenian people,” Ter-Petrosyan wrote on his Facebook account (Facebook is banned in the Russian Federation).
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1992–1994, Nagorno-Karabakh functioned for decades as a de facto but unrecognized Armenian-populated republic. In September 2020, hostilities resumed in the region. With Moscow’s mediation, a ceasefire agreement was reached on the night of November 9–10. As a result, Armenia lost control over all territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as several areas within the former Soviet-era autonomous region. Russian peacekeepers were subsequently deployed to the area.
In 2022, Armenia and Azerbaijan began negotiating a peace treaty with the mediation of Russia, the United States, and the European Union. In late May 2023, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that Yerevan was prepared to recognize Azerbaijan’s sovereignty within its Soviet-era borders, which includes Nagorno-Karabakh.
On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military operation in Karabakh that lasted approximately one day. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared that the country had restored its full territorial integrity, while the de facto authorities in Karabakh announced the “self-dissolution” of the unrecognized republic, effective January 1, 2024. Between September 24 and the end of that month, more than 100,000 residents of Karabakh had to flee to Armenia.
