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The developments over the past years have revealed the absence of a vibrant civil society in Armenia, political scientist Arman Saghatelyan said at the presentation of international political analyst Hermine Mkhitaryan's book "Defeat As A Choice” about the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.

"During this whole period, we have faced another crisis: it turns out that we have no civil society, we have been deceived," stated Saghatelyan, who holds a PhD in political science.

He charged all the organizations supposed to protect human rights and oversee the activities of the authorities performed “extremely selective functions”.

"In other words, these systems were applied to lead processes in one direction or another, depending on the conjuncture,” Saghatelyan said.

He also pointed to the lack of expert circles supposed to emerge from the circles of scientific society or intellectuals at the institutional level.

“We have quite serious problems with the so-called elites, including in the expert and scientific circles," the political analyst claimed.

“We are facing a real catastrophe: it's not only about the developments around Artsakh, but also about their logical continuation – the risk of the Armenian statehood loss and so on,” he added.