Kocharyan: Armenia has lost control over more territories than admitted

PanARMENIAN.Net - Leader of the opposition Armenia alliance, ex-President Robert Kocharyan has described the year 2021 as a "complete failure", maintaining that nothing has improved in the past 12 months.

Addressing an end-of-the-year press conference on Monday, December 27, Kocharyan said that the authorities are talking about 40 square kilometers being under Azerbaijani control, but in reality the Armenian side has lost control over much larger areas.

Lawmaker from the ruling Civil Contract party Eduard Aghajanyan said in mid-November that the Azerbaijani military has occupied about 41 square kilometers of the territory of Armenia since violating the country's border in May.

"The demarcation with the use of GPS systems has led to the fact that the Azerbaijani troops have been positioned on the edge of their supposed border. We had to retreat at least from 500 meters to 1-1․5 km, in some places a little more. The same happened in the sections of Vardenis and Nakhijevan," Kocharyan said, according to Pastinfo.

"The whole area, from their positions to ours, is not controlled by us. We have lost control not only over that 40 square kilometers, but also over dozens of times larger areas."

The former President added that Armenia has lost the opportunity to use key roads and noted that nothing has been done during the year to increase the capacity of the army.