Armenia's PM Calls Karabakh Unification Movement "A Fatal Mistake"

(MENAFN) Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has delivered a stunning rebuke of one of his nation's most deeply held national causes, publicly declaring that the decades-long movement to unite the Karabakh region with Armenia was fundamentally misguided — and that the territory was never rightfully Armenian to begin with.

The remarks, circulated Sunday by Armenian media outlets in a widely shared video, represent one of the most candid and controversial statements ever made by an Armenian leader on the subject.

"It must be stated that the Karabakh movement was a fatal mistake for us," Pashinyan said, before pressing further with a series of pointed rhetorical questions challenging the very foundation of the territorial claim.

"What made it ours? Explain to me, what made it ours? We built schools there, kindergartens, factories, lived there, but fundamentally how was it ours? It wasn't ours, it wasn't ours," he said.

The statement cuts to the heart of a conflict that consumed the South Caucasus for more than three decades. Karabakh — internationally recognized as sovereign Azerbaijani territory yet home for generations to a predominantly ethnic Armenian population — became the defining flashpoint of post-Soviet regional rivalries following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The dispute gave rise to two major wars and a protracted frozen conflict, with Armenian-backed forces controlling the enclave for decades. That reality was decisively reversed in 2023, when Azerbaijan launched a swift military operation that reestablished full control over the region, triggering a mass exodus of the vast majority of Karabakh's ethnic Armenian residents.

Pashinyan's remarks are expected to draw fierce backlash domestically, where the Karabakh cause has long carried deep emotional, cultural, and political significance.

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