People came to power in Armenia who consistently destroyed the combat-readiness of the army. The second President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, stated this in an exclusive interview with RBC television of Russia, when asked why the recent Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) war became possible.

The former president stated that Azerbaijan felt the weakness of Armenia in a number of parameters. "People came to power in Armenia who consistently destroyed the combat-readiness of the army. Did they understand that or did they not understand that it is a matter of coming, a very serious clarification. But the methodical discrediting of the heroes of the first [Artsakh] war, the moral destruction was a series of criminal cases, political persecution, accusation of corruption, in everything. Review of many moments related to the army service, the attitude towards the army; some reforms in the army, which had nothing in common with the increase of the defense capacity.

The second was the legitimization of a military solution to the conflict. In fact, the Armenian side moved the negotiation process from the sphere of self-determination of nations to the plane of territorial integrity. It is also unclear whether it was done consciously or because of ignorance, incompetence and illiteracy. But in fact, by declaring ‘Karabakh is Armenia, period," they brought the issue to the plane of territorial integrity. And that means legitimizing aggression,” Kocharyan said.

In response to the interviewer's remark that during the interview in Baku he was told that none of the former leaders of Armenia had made such statements to him, Kocharyan said: "It was just stupid to do that. The very existence of Karabakh, the whole negotiation process, the idea of Karabakh independence was built on the principle of self-determination of nations. They [the incumbent Armenian authorities] broke the argumentative basis of everything on which the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic was built. It was a very gross mistake, it is an actual legitimatizing of aggression."

And speaking about the political division of the Armenian society into “blacks” and “whites,” Kocharyan called it "an unprecedented internal turmoil of the Armenian society." "After all, if you have a country with which your relations are not normalized, to put it mildly, the perception is hostile, simply put, then the first thing you should have wanted to do was to create an internal division. In fact, we did unto ourselves what Azerbaijan and Turkey should have tried to do to Armenia," said Robert Kocharyan.