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Opposition MP Hayk Mamijanyan has rejected Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s "manipulative" claims about the 2020 war in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

Testifying before a parliamentary commission probing the war, Pashinyan said that he could have stopped the war three weeks before the ceasefire with Azerbaijan brokered by Russia on November 9, 2020, but rejected an earlier truce accord because it was even less favorable for Artsakh.

He stressed an October 20 deal envisaged the return of the Azerbaijani refugees to the strategic Artsakh town of Shushi, which would amount to its handover to Baku because “they were supposed to have a separate road connecting Shushi to Azerbaijan.”

"Pashinian is trying to manipulate the issue of refugees,” Mamijanyan, head of the opposition Pativ Unem faction, told a news conference in Yerevan on Wednesday. “The trilateral statement of November 9, 2020 states, “Internally displaced persons and refugees shall return to Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas under the control of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.” Has any Azerbaijani returned to the territories in Artsakh so far?”

“Pashinian is simply lying. There was a possibility of signing an armistice on that day without losing Shushi," Mamijanian stated.