The former deputy chief of the general staff of Armenia’s armed forces has been arrested on charges of negligence relating to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, amid ongoing political tensions inside the Caucasus country.
Lieutenant General Tiran Khachatrian was arrested on January 4 and will be detained awaiting trial. State prosecutors allege that Khachatrian failed to perform his official duties during the 44-day war in 2020 between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Khachatrian has denied the accusations and his legal team say they plan to file an appeal. In a January 5 statement, his lawyers called the charges “groundless” and that the detention of the former high-ranking military officer is retribution for his political views and that he is being scapegoated for Armenia’s “defeat in the war” with Azerbaijan.
The arrest is another sign of the political fault lines opened up in Armenia following Yerevan’s losses to Baku in successive campaigns, which have strained Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s relations with his country’s military and put him under increasing public pressure at home.
The 2020 war, when Azerbaijani forces took control of a chunk of Nagorno-Karabakh, was the second that Azerbaijan and Armenia fought in the last three decades over the breakaway region, which had been under ethnic Armenian separatists’ control, but recognized internationally as part of Azerbaijan since the 1990s.
That was followed by a decisive one-day military operation in September 2023 that saw Azerbaijani forces take control of the remaining parts of the region.
Khachatrian was awarded the title of National Hero of Armenia in 2020 following the war that year with Azerbaijan, but tensions quickly grew between him and Armenian authorities in its aftermath.
In February 2021, Pashinian dismissed Khachatrian from his post as deputy chief of the general staff of the armed forces, which led to escalating frictions with the military.
The day after Khachatryan was relieved of his duties, more than 40 of Armenia's top military officers -- including Khachatrian -- called for the resignation of the prime minister and his government.
Pashinian condemned the move as part of a coup attempt to depose him.
As part of the January 4 preliminary hearing, Armenia’s investigative committee said that the charges against Khachatrian stem from the “negligent attitude toward the performance of his official duties” in October 2020, including failing to set up adequate defensive lines, which led to Azerbaijani forces making strategic gains.
Khachatrian was also arrested and detained for two months in January 2024 after he fired a gun during a restaurant confrontation. Prosecutors said the former military official injured a bystander at a neighboring table, but Khachatrian denied the charges and said he fired his gun in the air in self-defense.
Following that 2024 arrest, Khachatrian’s lawyer claimed to RFE/RL that the case was being exploited by the authorities as an opportunity to silence and intimidate him for his criticism of the government.