NA Deputy Speaker: 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh caused by   imbalance of military power 

ArmInfo. The 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh was caused by an imbalance of military power in Azerbaijan's favor, as stated by Vice Speaker of the National  Assembly  Ruben Rubinyan  to reporters  on December 3.  According to  him, third President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan stated  back in 2018 that the negotiations on Nagorno-Karabakh had reached a  deadlock.

At that time, he also pointed out the lack of hope that Azerbaijan  would not attempt to resolve the issue by military force. "The 44-day  war occurred for two reasons. The first and foremost reason is that  as of 1998, the ratio of military budgets between Armenia and  Azerbaijan was practically equal. When Robert Kocharyan was finishing  his presidential term in Armenia, this ratio was 1 to 5 in  Azerbaijan's favor. Under Serzh Sargsyan, this gap grew even further,  and we inherited this large budget gap, which, incidentally, was  reduced under our rule. At the same time, the family budgets of  Kocharyan and Sargsyan grew at a very significant rate," Rubinyan  noted.  The second reason, he cited, was that the negotiating package  initially focused on how to return seven districts to Azerbaijan and  what to do with Nagorno-Karabakh. "It's important to understand that  at that point, virtually everyone recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part  of Azerbaijani territory. Meanwhile, the conditions in the  negotiation process were constantly deteriorating, and Azerbaijan  didn't even agree to them, as each successive document was better for  it than the last. The only document that one of the  parties-Armenia-agreed to last time was the Kazan document. At the  same time, there wasn't a single document that Azerbaijan agreed to  that Armenia rejected," Rubinyan emphasized. According to the Deputy  Speaker, third president Serzh Sargsyan himself stated that under the  2018 document, which formed the basis for the 2019 document, Armenia  was making real territorial concessions, while Azerbaijan was not.  "He said that the issues of Nagorno-Karabakh's interim and final  status remain blurred, and that Azerbaijan would seek control over  the remaining territories in the next stage. Moreover, this document  doesn't directly state that the Lachin region, with the exception of  the Lachin corridor, and the Kelbajar regions remain under  Nagorno-Karabakh's control. If the opposition calls us traitors, why  didn't they accept the proposals back in 2016, if those proposals  were so good? If those proposals were bad, why does the opposition  blame us and ask why we didn't accept them?" Rubinyan added, noting  that there would have been casualties regardless, as the war would  have begun from an even worse starting position for the Armenian  side.  He also noted that the 2022 Prague statement made no changes  to the essence of the November 9, 2020 statement or the role of  Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh.