Security Council "was briefed mid-war about imminent defeat" in Karabakh

PanARMENIAN.Net - Former acting Director of the National Security Service Mikayel Hambardzumyan has said that acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan did not inform the Security Council on October 19 that there had been a proposal from the Russian president to stop the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Hambardzumyan said in an interview with ArmNews TV that both then Chief of Army General Staff Onik Gasparyan and then Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan told the Security Council on October 19 that the Armenian side was losing and that the situation was deteriorating by the day.

According to him, he was personally reporting on the situation 24/7 and now can't understand why "the Prime Minister, who could and should have made the necessary decisions, didn't do it."

He noted that if Pashinyan had accepted the Russian side's proposal at the time, the Armenian side would not have lost thousands of troops.

Pashinyan told lawmakers earlier that Gasparyan has not told him to stop the war. The acting PM claimed that Gasparyan had told a Security Council meeting on September 30 – the fourth day of the war – that the Azerbaijani military had not managed to advance.