Your trusted source

Armenia’s third President Serzh Sargsyan reflected on the events in April 2018, the reasons behind his resignation and other issue as he sat down for an interview with filmmaker Mher Mkrtchyan aired on Armnews on Friday evening.

Responding to the question about his resignation and the fact that many people now blame him for giving up power, Sargsyan noted: “It’s not strange for me that people are asking that kind of questions. I think it’s only natural. What else should they do? They won’t blame themselves, will they? Should they say they were standing in the square, or that they were blocking street traffic, that they have been chanting that “dmb-dmb-hoo”? They have every right to shift the blame on me.”

The ex-president stated he did not imagine at the time that his resignation would lead to such consequences.

“No doubt I did not imagine at the time that it would lead to such consequences. Of course, I would understand clearly that it was an anti-Karabakh movement. I understood well that people en masse were made to believe for years that Armenia is a non-developing country, that corruption in our country had peaked to unspeakable levels, that injustice in Armenia is infinite, etc. But that such a catastrophe would have happened, of course, I could not have possibly foreseen,” Sargsyan said, adding he predicted that there could be some issues in the Karabakh negotiation process.

“I understood that indeed there could be some issues, understood that if the main negotiators in the peace process changed, the Karabakh conflict resolution would have taken a different turn. That was quite possible. That’s how I saw it then,” he said.