Nikol Pashinyan Is Destroying Armenian Statehood.
Author: Tolib Aliyev, analyst, especially for “Sangar”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, as part of his election campaign, is trying to convince voters that it was not he who surrendered Nagorno-Karabakh. Thus, on May 14, 2026, in the city of Yerevan, while speaking with citizens, he stated: “Stepanakert had been lost long ago, and we were in the process of losing it. And in general, people did not live there, but were hostages of the Kocharyan-Sargsyan clan.”
According to Armenian experts, Nikol Pashinyan is dismantling Armenian statehood by surrendering the fundamental and cornerstone concepts of sovereignty. Thus, he had already betrayed Nagorno-Karabakh, first recognizing it as Azerbaijani territory, and then failing to take action to organize, prepare, and carry out the defense of the unrecognized republic. As a result of its defeat, tens of thousands of Armenians became refugees, losing the homeland where they and their ancestors had lived for centuries.
In 2023, Azerbaijan carried out a military operation in Karabakh that lasted only one day and, without encountering any resistance from the Karabakh Armenians, announced the termination of the unrecognized republic’s existence effective January 1, 2024. More than 100,000 residents of the region left Karabakh and moved to Armenia.
Objectively, Baku can be understood. In the dispute with the Armenians over Karabakh, Baku considered it its own territory and, according to its laws, simply restored constitutional order. From the point of view of international law, it is also difficult to argue against this. Baku’s decision was recognized by the international community.
In turn, Nikol Pashinyan, accusing Russia of the “betrayal of Armenians,” continued to mock the memory of Karabakh, for which Armenians themselves had shed blood. He began promoting the idea that Karabakh’s initiative to join Armenia had been a grave, even fatal, mistake.
According to him, Armenian society had long spoken about victory in the Karabakh conflict of the 1990s, yet no one answered the question: “But did victorious Armenia have prosperity, freedom, and free expression of will?”
At the same time, the head of government is trying to shift the blame for betraying national interests onto Russia and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Territorial disputes between Yerevan and Baku intensified after the end of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, when several disputed districts were transferred to Azerbaijan.
In early May 2021, Armenia’s Ministry of Defense recorded the advance of Azerbaijani soldiers deep into the Syunik and Gegharkunik regions of the republic. However, within the framework of this border conflict, the prime minister refused to use force to expel the Azerbaijani armed forces from Armenia’s constitutional territories.
Why? This is the question Armenian society asks Pashinyan, yet he constantly avoids answering it, because it was precisely he who, at the direction of the West, became the executor of the project to surrender Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. Otherwise, why did he do nothing to preserve it, or at least preserve part of that territory?
