Artsrun Hovhannisyan reveals new details about Azerbaijan's demands for Shushi & Pashinyan's order to reinforce city (June 28, 2023)
REPORTER: The War Commission [asked a series of questions to Pashinyan](https://www.reddit.com/r/armenia/comments/14l61jr/day_2_pashinyan_testimony_karabakh_negotiations/) about the military's preparedness, intel, and arsenal. Let's start with "Why did the war begin?"
ARTSRUN: There is a growing belief among military experts that geopolitics was the main reason why the war began in 2020. The relations between large regional powers *[Turkey-Russia]* played a crucial role. Also, do not underestimate the chaos introduced by the COVID pandemic. There is a reason is started in September 2020, and not next year, or a year earlier, or several months later.
Another trigger was the post-2018 army improvements in Armenia. People sitting in Turkey's army headquarters aren't idiots, and the same can be said about the Azeri army to a certain degree. Pre-2018, Armenia's military expenditure was essentially a flat line, while Azerbaijan was growing. As it was stated by Pashinyan, after 2018 our armed forces received ֏605bn over 2.5 years, compared to ֏350bn over 10 years. Armenia's pulse was no longer flat. Our neighbors feared that Azerbaijan's military advantage would gradually diminish had they waited longer.
REPORTER: An opposition figure says the government was spending money only on things that they deemed convenient.
ARTSRUN: The government cut a check for every single weapon that the army's assessment deemed necessary. As of August 2020, the 30-year armament expenditures of Armenia were ~$6bn, while Azerbaijan had spent $20bn. *[If I understood correctly.]*
After the July 2020 clashes, army CoGS presented its "dream list". It was worth $5bn. Of course it was unrealistic to allocate all the funds at once. It was a multi-year plan. Besides that, even if you had $5bn ready on your balance, it's practically impossible to acquire that many weapons in under 4 months, and I'm not even talking about the time needed for training your troops to use them.
REPORTER: Armenia's CoGS and Artsakh's government were reporting contradictory information during the war, as revealed by Pashinyan.
ARTSRUN: As the wartime spokesman myself, I witnessed this problem firsthand. In reality, it wasn't always the case that the information coming from Artsakh was more accurate than CoGS's info. There were a few opposite instances as well. This was a highly tragic problem for us. For many years, we developed two "vertical" chains of command, in Armenia and Artsakh.
REPORTER: Tell us about our officers and commanders.
ARTSRUN: The army command consists of humans. Have we been treating humans well enough all these years? Did we have enough humans? Our army had a catastrophically severe shortage of officers. We had less than half of what was necessary, from Leuthenant to Lt. Gen. Even according to the Soviet doctrine, our forces couldn't be considered combat-ready in that condition. The papers expected those officers to exist in real life, but in reality those officers existed only on paper.
The staffing level at the 9th defense district [Jabrayil direction] was only 70%-80%. This is the area that took the heaviest hit.
But were those officers trained to manage modern warfare? Of course not.
Other than officers, the second part of the army command is technology. Did we use digital or paper maps? Paper maps and old-fashioned phone reports... it was laughable. Then people wonder where the information conflicts came from.
Tens of millions of dollars were *wasted* over the course of 20 years to acquire control systems. On the other hand, Azerbaijani army commanders were using tablets to monitor their troops and make decisions on the fly, while receiving info from the drones. This is what we were missing, this is why we lost.
Name a single Col.Gen. of our army who, since 1994, organized a full-sized military training of an Army Corps to prepare them for assault. They have always trained for defense.
REPORTER: Was Artsakh Defense Army chief Jalal Harutyunyan equipped with experience to lead the entire army on all fronts?
ARTSRUN: His duties were shared with others. Kelbajar was under the 2nd Army Corps, not Jalal. The [problematic] 9th defense district was fully removed from Jalal's command, merged with the 1st Army Corps, and led by Lt. Gen. Tigran Khachatryan.
What was left for Jalal to manage? Just the central areas. We were able to prevent a catastrophe in the 6th district [Mataghis] in the early days of the war only thanks to the mobilized forces sent from Armenia. They stabilized the front. After these events, can you tell me how much frontline was left for Jalal to manage? It was the equivalent of a single defense district.
REPORTER: Isn't it bad that the battlefield was fragmented like this?
ARTSRUN: It can be a problem.
REPORTER: Who was the biggest boss?
ARTSRUN: CoGS Onik Gasparyan. He did have the right to split the battlefield and tasks based on various parameters, so that wasn't the issue.
REPORTER: Any other problems?
ARTSRUN: Jalal's former bosses were also present in the bunker [Gen. Movses Hakobyan, Gen. Samvel Babayan, Levon Mnatsakanyan, Oganovsky, Vitaly Balasanyan, and very briefly Seyran Ohanyan]. Jalal felt constrained because of their presence. He wouldn't "dare" to make decisions himself. After all, Jalal was once a deputy commander of a division while those men were his superiors. This was psychological pressure.
REPORTER: Did Armenia have the right to use Iskander during the war?
ARTSRUN: It's classified. I can't disclose.
REPORTER: Pashinyan said that Armenia didn't have the full legal right to use certain types of weapons.
ARTSRUN: Our arsenal had weapons of strategic importance that did not fully belong to us. That's all I can say. This is a serious topic, but it's classified. *[пасиб агромни Владимич]*
REPORTER: This one shook me up. Pashinyan said our army had a mobility problem. Many of our casualties came from using easily detectable large trucks with many soldiers concentrated together.
ARTSRUN: This wasn't a secret. Our post-war analysis highlighted the issue. And after the 2022 war in Ukraine, one must be fully blind not to see the issue. Soviet doctrine: big heavy trucks in a long column, slow, very close to each other. You're a sitting duck for precision weapons. Today it mostly affects Russians, but also Ukrainians sometimes. When you load 40 soldiers in a URAL truck and drive slowly to the frontline, you become an easy target. A significant % of our deaths came from this.
During the war, we had several army units that weren't using this outdated tactic. My research concluded that they lost 0 soldiers during transportation. They were using small personal vehicles at a high speed, in short columns.
REPORTER: Why are individual units doing this? Shouldn't the whole army do it?
ARTSRUN: The army as a whole is still using the outdated Soviet doctrine. The commanders who had an ounce of common sense or graduated from Western military school were ignoring this doctrine. Not a single soldier was lost. Those 4 army bases traveled 600 km each to-from frontlines, without losing a single soldier.
REPORTER: Was there treason around the Aregasar height? Pashinyan said that one of our generals ordered a retreat from the height that had just been recaptured.
ARTSRUN: I used to ignore similar "treason" reports during the war, thinking that an Armenian person would never betray like that. Over time, we have witnessed numerous instances of treason with evidence.
I've read thousands of reports by now, but this one is the worst. We have a parent of a fallen soldier who buried his son on October 1. The next day he went to the frontlines and remained there until late November. Upon his return, he gave witnesses account on how certain individuals -- the names of whom are known but redacted -- were instructing soldiers that the "lands are sold, why are you even fighting, your enemy is the government". This isn't the only such case.
REPORTER: What about the surrender of Aregasar height?
ARTSRUN: I don't possess many details about that height but I'm aware of the order to withdraw from the 7th defense region [Martakert region]. Here is how they reached that conclusion:
Something happened in the 6th region, there is a criminal investigation, it's about the Mataghis area. The enemy was able to break through our lines in that area. There were concerns that this breach could leave the 7th region vulnerable, so a decision was made to withdraw from the 7th region. This would have been a very major retreat. Thankfully we didn't.
REPORTER: Who wanted us to withdraw from 7th?
ARTSRUN: Pashinyan mentioned names: Gen. Movses Hakobyan. There were some army officials who voiced their opposition to withdrawal. The news reached Pashinyan. Then Artsakh president Arayik went to personally inspect the area. A political-military decision was made not to withdraw.
REPORTER: Shortly before the fall of Shushi, President Arayik said Azeris were 5 km from the city. You and I spoke over the phone repeatedly on the morning of November 8. You told me you were about to enter Shushi. There was reportedly a counteroffensive that was being planned. Shortly afterward you felt disappointed and told me that you were being told conflicting things. What happened there?
ARTSRUN: I still don't know what happened, but it relates to the more general issue of receiving conflicting information shared by Armenia's CoGS and Artsakh's government. My source, which I would often share publicly, was Armenia's CoGS.
Regarding Shushi. According to the information that I received from CoGS office, MOD himself, local commanders, and Artsakh defense army commander Mikael Arzumanyan [the official tasked with the Shushi operation] whom I met on Nov. 6, here is my understanding of Shushi events:
As I've said before, we almost completely lost Shushi on November 7. The atmosphere was catastrophic. On November 8, a decision was made to launch a counteroffensive. Pashinyan revealed that he gave the order to retake the city. The Artsakh Defense Army planned and carried out an operation to retake the city. It energized me, and I expressed my feelings to you over the phone. The sensation lasted until the night of 8/ morning of 9. Then, according to reports you may have seen, we used every single weapon in our arsenal to retake Shushi at any cost: Smerch, SCUD, artillery, missiles, troops, and even Iskander.
Why did the operation fail? Why was it being reported that everything was "going according to plan"? I witnessed those personal reports sent from Artsakh to Armenian's CoGS and MOD. This was November 8. "Everything is so wonderful," the reports stated. We were told that our forces were successfully clearing the city. The reports were so great that I had to check with my Artsakh-based sources to ensure our CoGS wasn't wrong. They were also excited.
Sadly, the operation failed on the night of 8/ morning of 9. We failed to retake the city. We all have questions about why. There is a criminal investigation.
REPORTER: Did Pashinyan try to hold Shushi?
ARTSRUN: Pashinyan issued the first order to defend Shushi on October 15. This is around the time when we weren't entirely sure if Hadrut was lost or not. I visited MOD's office but couldn't get hold of CoGS to clarify some things because I was receiving conflicting reports and wanted to clarify them. I wasn't sure if Hadrut was lost because just a day earlier I visited the outskirts of Hadrut.
The Deputy MOD informed me that Azerbaijan had made an offer to stop the war; the bosses were discussing it in the bunker. There was a heavy negotiation process with Russian mediation in those days. The deputy MOD informed me that Azeris demanded Shushi. "Give us Shushi and we'll stop the war." It was like a cold shower for me because the Azeri army was still quite far. I didn't see how they could just demand it at that stage of the war. There were still many hills, gorges, and forests to pass.
After Pashinyan's October 15 order to defend Shushi, I noticed the reinforcement efforts around October 20. I had friends on the ground. It all made sense now: Azerbaijan's main goal was Shushi.
I believed that we had sufficient time to organize its defense because Azeris were not close yet.
Artsakh army chief Arzumanyan informed me that they were mining the areas leading to Shushi, setting up traps, etc. The city itself wasn't mined or burned down to the ground because no one wanted to surrender it.
There was, in fact, a legitimate attempt to retake Shushi on November 8. Sadly it was unsuccessful.
- [Reported timeline of events: Russian prophet Vladimir Zhirinovsky meets Putin on October 11 and immediately afterward announces that Shushi should be given to Azerbaijan. Three days later Pashinyan orders the army to defend Shushi. Another five days later Putin and Aliyev present the final plan to "surrender Shushi and install peacekeepers in Meghri". Pashinyan rejects it. Azerbaijan gains Shushi but not a Meghri corridor.]*
REPORTER: We purchased OSA-AK air defense units. Were they worth it?
ARTSRUN: Our army's 30+ OSA-AK units shut down 70+ drones.
REPORTER: Did Pashinyan change Serj's weapons acquisition plan?
ARTSRUN: No. It was supplemented with additional weapons. Serj's plan included the purchase of several BUK and TOR units but Russia told us they couldn't supply the necessary numbers for the next few years. After all, we weren't Russia's only client, they had a backlog, including for their own army.
This was Russia's exact response: we can give you the next batch [of TOR] in 2024 and onward. That is recorded on paper. We were able to import 4-6 units of TOR before the war. This shortage of supply led to the army's decision to acquire the more readily available OSA-AK units from around the world [Jordan], also partly because our existing OSA units were already aging and had to be replaced anyway. They did not cancel the pending TOR order with Russia.
TOR was our main goal. We needed 20+ pieces.
In 2017 I took part in the discussion process to acquire those weapons. While the acquisition plan was being drafted, the decision-makers decided to cut the number of listed weapons by almost 3x. The original wishlist had weapons worth $2.8bn, but it was reduced to $1bn, for a 5-year period. So they shortened their own list. This is why you need to stop paying attention to cheap political shots.
But why did this list focus so heavily on air defense units? Thanks to the Soviet doctrine, they believed that they could "cover the air" and that it would be enough to save us. It doesn't work like this in practice. I want the followers of this Soviet doctrine to rent a building, collectively organize a meeting, and pass around their great ideas to each other all day long.
REPORTER: Wasn't our air defense shooting down our jets during the war? *[Reportedly true.]*
ARTSRUN: They were dreaming for Soviet-era air defense systems that have been proven to be ineffective *in the absence of a proper airforce.*
For years they attached themselves to Russia as their solve military partner. They never even tried to change that. They laughed at me when I wrote about the need to cooperate with India in 2014. Now they manipulate that their "plan was changed". No plans were changed.
The SU-30SM jets were not purchased "instead" of other weapons. The government had cash so they agreed to acquire the jets as additional weapons. The SU jets did not "replace" any other weapon on [Serj's list].
REPORTER: What's happening on the Ukraine-Russia front?
ARTSRUN: Ukraine started testing Russian frontlines 2 weeks ago and launched the main counteroffensive 1 week ago. It started with the bombardment of Russian supplies and command centers in Crimea direction.
It's underway. It's heavy. Russians are somewhat but not very effective in defense. Both sides have learned lessons after 1.5 years.
It's too early to judge whether Ukraine's counteroffensive is successful or not because you need a minimum of a month for this. Ukraine can lose a lot of Western support if it fails. Russia is grossly exaggerating Ukrainian personnel and equipment losses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZzTpNAKZBo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stqCAXCIuFg
- wartime army chief CoGS Onik Gasparyan presented the problems before and during the war:
Immediately after being appointed as CoGS in June 2020, I urged Pashinyan to take steps to drastically improve our relations with Russia. He accepted my proposals and we began working on it, but couldn't finish it before the war.
On 4 Jul 2020, I asked Pashinyan to drastically improve our relations with CSTO and Russia [and other neighbors] so we could prevent a war or at least create better conditions for our military in the event of war.
On 10 Jul 2020, I presented the 2020-2024 armament plan. It would cost $8bn.
In August 2020 I reported that our air defense was in poor shape, we didn't have enough radio-electronic tools to suppress enemy command systems, our intel was weak, and we didn't have enough drones. These tools were all requested in the [newly prepared] 2020-2024 report.
We also asked for a surveillance and communication satellite that could be leased or owned by Armenia.
Between 2018-2020 we fully addressed the issue of equipping the defense army with video surveillance systems, but some problems remained.
We needed to modernize our fire control systems in tanks because they didn't meet modern warfare standards and couldn't be used for combat at night.
We needed to decentralize ammunition depots, move them closer to our forces, and build underground tunnels for storage.
More inventory for personnel for combat operations.
We needed a new system of delivering first aid to wounded soldiers. The existing one couldn't function during a large-scale war.
After July clashes Pashinyan asked me about the army's needs. I reminded him about the 2018-2024 plan, and the new 2020-2024 plan which contained additional weapons. The process was launched but it couldn't be completed because the war began just a few months later.
Our pre-war assessment was that we could have resisted in the north and north-eastern operative directions [unclear if he's referring to Artsakh or Armenia], but the opponent had an absolute advantage in other directions.
During my testimony to War Commission, I presented the main problems why we lost the war:
1) World powers chose to remain neutral. Only symbolic military and political assistance were provided to Armenia.
2) Opponent had an absolute advantage in quality, quantity, precision, and air.
3) We weren't given a chance to finish the arms acquisition plan.
4) Martial law wasn't handled properly, so in many locations our residents closed the roads, thus blocking the movement from military bases to the frontlines.
5) Crime was not properly punished in the army. There was an atmosphere of impunity, resulting in mass desertion.
6) Due to weak diplomatic efforts, Armenia found itself under blockade and couldn't regularly receive missiles and ammo, and couldn't utilize the full opportunity to replace the lost equipment.
7) Decision not to restrict the internet allowed the opponent to carry out a psychological operation against our population.
8) Problems with inviting domestic and foreign volunteer fighters. For example, the parliament ratified the convention against the use of hired mercenaries [in response to Turkey's and Azerbaijan's use of militants from Syria]. There were financial problems in the early stages.
9) Diplomats bad.
10) Army commanders good but flawed.... but mostly good.
11) Artsakh President Arayik reported top-notch info to Nikol while we delivered junk because the 3-eyed-demon Arayik had countless minions on the ground who would regularly keep him up to date after every single event, while we relied on our HP Envy monochrome printer (with a pending 5.7 MB firmware update) to print out the report whenever the wifi worked. We were mad about this so we asked Nikol to ask Arayik to pass his quality info to his army who would then pass it to us so we could pass it to Nikol, instead of him directly passing it to Nikol. This was necessary for pressing the red buttons -- with strange Cyrillic hieroglyphs -- more efficiently.
It wasn't Moscow who instructed me to demand Nikol's resignation in February 2021. I promise.
Forever yours even after being unjustly fired,
Օնյուլ․