Journalist Tatul Hakobyan wrote on his Facebook page:

"With a fresh brain, with bitter coffee. When writing about the treason and the military coup in Armenia in 1997-1998, there are two critical circumstances that today many people don't remember or don't want to remember.

First, from 2015 until the catastrophic war and the depopulation of Artsakh, Russia directly or indirectly offered Armenia to return five or six regions to Azerbaijan to introduce Russian peacekeepers into the conflict zone; then, in the 1990s, Russia was not enthusiastic about the settlement of Karabakh and the prospect of returning the regions to Azerbaijan, because the conflict OSCE multinational forces would enter the zone, which would not include Russians.

First, President Levon Ter-Petrosyan did not have Russia's clear, unequivocal, and undisciplined support regarding the Second Settlement. Under these conditions, the criminal group under Russian control went on such an adventure and aborted the possibility of keeping Artsakh Armenian.

In other words, if Russia's imperial interest required closer cooperation with Azerbaijan and the return of five regions from the 2010s, then in the 1990s, the return and settlement of five areas was not in Russia's interests, as the OSCE multinational forces entered the region, which Moscow did not have enough resources to counterbalance in those years.