"Fact" daily newspaper writes:
"A rather extensive package has been published, and the average citizen, upon getting acquainted with these packages, may not be able to draw correct conclusions and judgments and decide what the package is about."- Vitaly Mangasaryan, the head of the "Henaket" analytical center, an expert on military issues, says in an interview with "Pasti"when we refer to the government's recent publication of a document package related to the Artsakh conflict negotiation process.
He emphasizes that before its publication, various figures of the government, led by Nikol Pashinyan, put forward a number of theses. "It was said that all our international partners, particularly the co-chairing countries of the Minsk Group, recognized Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan even before that. After getting acquainted with these packages and carefully studying them, it is difficult to come to such a conclusion even if you have a very big imagination. The second claim was that during the negotiation process during the "former" times, Artsakh was recognized, it has been part of Azerbaijan for a long time. These documents testify to the fact that such claims were lies and generally had nothing to do with reality, because the efforts made by both the co-chairing countries of the Minsk Group and our government show that in any case, during the negotiation process, we tried as much as possible to take steps in the interests of our country in order to have even more advantageous positions for us. Now it actually turns out that during the current government, Artsakh was handed over to Azerbaijan, and the theses of the current government, which they put forward until now, have vanished. No one recognized Artsakh as a part of Azerbaijan during the rule of the "formers". If we could implement at least half of the published documents, we would be in a much more advantageous position than now," our interlocutor notes.
And what was the expectation of the current authorities that the expert community and the media would not get acquainted with these documents and would not present them to the public? "They hope that the majority of people will simply not read them and will remain under the theses that have been imposed on them so far. Both the expert and media fields should keep this issue on the agenda for a long time and try to convey to the public the thesis that we have found ourselves in this situation as a result of the steps taken by the actual government. They also say that the Artsakh issue was such an easy issue, you would have solved it. There is also a lot of manipulation here. I will describe graphically. Let's imagine that we are working in some laboratory and we are trying to solve a complex scientific research problem, conventionally speaking, to create a robot dog. Our group of scientists has been working on this project for 30 years.
The management team changes, after that our whole project evaporates, and the same management says: if it was so easy, you would have gotten that robot dog earlier, why do you blame us? In the context of the issue we have discussed, in fact, the current government has said that it is starting the negotiations from its own point, that is, from the first day of entering the laboratory, they said that we know a better algorithm to solve these complex problems and we are going that way. They put aside the entire process done before and tried to move forward with their algorithm. And as a result, we had a terrible situation: the loss of Artsakh and ethnic cleansing. Even after that, they say that it is an easy problem, you would have solved it then. It's the same as blaming Einstein and saying: if the theory of relativity was easy, why did you work on that project for 20 years and solve it in a short time? No one says that the issue of Artsakh is a very easy issue, if it was easy, people would have solved it. It's a different matter that you try to enter that process, you try to put yourself in the place of a highly qualified diplomat and solve this issue with your algorithm, drawing a cross on the co-chairing countries of the Minsk Group, on the small and big achievements we had in the negotiation process over thirty years. After all this, to say that it is an easy problem, you would solve it, is just manipulation. I do not know a conscious, intelligent and logical person in the public and political field who would say that the issue of Artsakh is an easy issue. Everyone realizes that a lot of effort was needed to solve this problem," he adds.
He emphasizes that there was and is a serious problem of accurately and soberly assessing the situation and making strategic decisions in our military-political leadership, which has led to this situation. "I have the impression that the current government is also happy that the Artsakh issue had such an outcome. They say we got rid of the rope around our neck. Let's imagine that our army was able to inflict a crushing defeat on Azerbaijan, and the latter retreated, as happened during April Yan. They attacked, got the answer, got scared. Now, in the situation I mentioned, did we tighten that leash more or did we loosen it more? According to logic, we should have pressed harder if we had some success during the war. This allows us to assume that from the beginning the decision was made to get rid of that leash. In other words, we will not be able to solve the problem normally, it is a good opportunity to get off the leash, so to speak. At some point, it should be criminally assessed."
Talking about manipulations and war, we couldn't help but ask about the manipulations that are done regarding the number of people killed in the war. Nikol Pashinyan says minus plus fifty, other hoods publish different numbers. "I think it is done just to confuse the numbers, to provide different information to people from time to time, so that the average citizen is confused. The government has the exact numbers. If they had published them, if they had published the names of the victims, as after the April war, it is clear that such speculations would be as little as possible. They did not do that. Moreover, Alen Simonyan says one number, Andranik Kocharyan says another number, the investigative committee says another number from time to time. It turns out that our military-political leadership either does not know these numbers for some reason, or deliberately manipulates them in order to confuse the public. Then they complain that the real number of the dead is not important for people, when they are the number one responsible and guilty of that situation, if they are confusing us all, then why are they upset that this or that person publishes different numbers from time to time? Here the responsibility lies in the field of government. We are living in the 21st century, and verifying such information, publishing the names of people in five years should not be a difficult process, but in fact, until this moment, we do not have a list with the names of the victims. There have been so many heroic episodes in different directions, but they are not talked about. The government tells the public that there were defectors and spies. You should be able to manage these phenomena, not to blame a few people or that they betrayed, and say that we are not to blame," concludes Vitaly Mangasaryan.
Lusine Arakelyan
