Could Armenia Have Kept Shushi?

In this segment the hosts push back on the Pashinyan regime’s renewed blaming of Russia for the 2020 war, pointing to a concrete alternative that existed during the fighting. Hovik recalls the highly publicized October 19th to 20th ceasefire proposal, one that Pashinyan himself acknowledged existed, under which Armenians would have kept Shushi, albeit with resettlement of the town by Azeris. Compared to what came after, he argues, that outcome looks like paradise.

The clip is part of a longer exchange in which Asbed notes that Russia made multiple attempts to stop the fighting and that it was ultimately Russia that brokered the ceasefire on November 10, 2020. The hosts concede Russia could have done more, but they reject the narrative that Moscow enticed Pashinyan into war and then withheld help, calling that framing ridiculous given who started and escalated the conflict.

This connects to our wider discussion of Armenia’s relations with Russia, the CSTO and the EAEU, and to Alen Simonyan’s recent comments again blaming Russia for failing to stop the 44-Day War. The 2020 Nagorno Karabakh War, which ran from September 27 to November 10, 2020, remains central to how Armenians understand the later loss of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh). We discuss a specific, debatable claim, that a different choice could have preserved Shushi.