YEREVAN, OCTOBER 14, ARMENPRESS. In an address to the nation on September 14, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said “the Turkish-Azerbaijani terrorist preliminary plan on taking over Nagorno Karabakh and the adjacent regions with a blitzkrieg” has failed thanks to the Armenian army’s heroic generals, officers, non-commissioned officers, sergeants, soldiers, volunteers, militia-members, and the joint work and efforts of the public administration system – the government, the parliament, local self governing bodies and other state agencies.

“The terrorist war unleashed by Turkey and Azerbaijan against Artsakh continues for already 18 days. Prior to addressing the situation at the frontline, I find it noteworthy to emphasize that today it is extremely important for us to understand the created military-political situation, but this in turn requires understanding the reasons and conditions of this war’s outbreak,” Pashinyan said.

Pashinyan said that in the negotiations process over Karabakh, Azerbaijan had step by step reached a point where it was putting a demand before the Armenian people, the Armenians of Karabakh to refuse from their own rights.

“That demand was basically the following: immediately surrender 5 of the 7 territories to Azerbaijan, present a clear timetable of surrendering the remaining two territories and record that any status of Nagorno Karabakh must be as part of Azerbaijan. Moreover, the clarification of Nagorno Karabakh’s status was to have no reason-consequence connection whatsoever with the process of surrendering the territories. Meaning, territories were to be surrendered not in exchange of status, but peace, otherwise Azerbaijan was threatening to solve the issue through war. Our government, that inherited this base of negotiations, or more accurately – the final destination of negotiations, basically refused to discuss the issue in such way because it was unacceptable.

In these conditions, when we were trying to clearly record that without specifying Artsakh’s status the settlement of the issue is impossible, Azerbaijan was refusing from any serious discussions around the status, by basically saying that the only status Artsakh could have was something autonomous within Azerbaijan. And basically a basis of a framework was being placed according to which Karabakh was to be completely cleansed from Armenians. At the same time Azerbaijan was developing bellicose rhetoric and advocating Armenophobia,” Pashinyan said.

He said that reforms and re-equipments were being carried out in the Armenian military during the past two and a half years, trying to create real pre-requisites to the “there is no military solution to the Karabakh issue” model. He said that the Armenian army’s victory in successfully defending the country from the 2020 July attacks by Azerbaijan proved for many the unexpected: the Azerbaijani army is unable to solve the Karabakh issue militarily. Pashinyan said that this fact was of shocking significance not only to Azerbaijan itself, but also many other countries, including first of all Turkey. Immediately after the July battles, unprecedented massive Turkish-Azeri joint military exercises began, large numbers of Turkish troops and military materiel was transported to Azerbaijan. Pashinyan said that during these drills once again they were convinced that the Azeri army is unable to solve any issues in the near future and Turkey decided that from now on it is going to deal with the solution of the Karabakh conflict.

“An unprecedented thing happened, Turkey began overtly and publicly threatening Armenia, at the same time it transferred large numbers of terrorists and mercenaries from Syria to the Karabakh conflict zone, realizing that the Azeri army’s forces alone aren’t sufficient for solving their task.

In this situation we tried to utilize strategic deterrent mechanisms, with the simple calculation that if Turkey achieves its goals in South Caucasus it will unavoidably lead to a chain reaction and therefore the countries in the region and outside of it which will unavoidably become subjects of this destabilization must take strategic deterrent actions.

 In this phase, however, an unusual circumstance was recorded. A number of countries having strategic deterrent opportunities did not duly evaluate the danger by continuing to view the issue in the context of the Karabakh conflict and basically considering that it is the “territories for peace” formula that could save the situation.

This, certainly being unacceptable for us, is very similar to the Munich agreements of 1938, when some European countries yielded Czechoslovakia to Germany for so called peace. You all know what happened then. And now the question is the following, will the world allow the development of a new Hitler, this time in this part of Asia?

The war against Artsakh started not unexpectedly for us. We knew and we were waiting: the question was when and from where specifically will the enemy attack.

The Defense Army of Artsakh is really fighting heroically from the first seconds. The Turkish-Azerbaijani terrorist mercenary alliance launched the most powerful attack on Artsakh, with tanks, armored vehicles, missiles, artillery, warplanes, helicopters, multirole unmanned aerial vehicles, enormously large number of troops, including several thousands of commandos from Turkey, and according to some data also from Pakistan, as well as mercenaries and terrorists from Syria.

During the first week the adversary didn’t have any single strategic or territorial success even when it had unlimited supplies and personnel, while Artsakh and Armenia were acting basically in blockade. During this period the adversary lost huge numbers of equipment, large number of personnel, and a part of these losses were mercenary terrorists, which Azerbaijan wasn’t worried about at all. While every drop of our blood is filling us with sorrow, not mentioning the huge number of victims that we have now. The statement adopted in Moscow last Friday and our participation in that process was aimed at preventing further losses, which envisaged a humanitarian ceasefire, complete exchange of bodies, prisoners of war and other detainees, return to negotiations under the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship with the logic of speedily settling the issue.

Azerbaijan, however, did not adhere to the ceasefire agreement not even for a second and till now continues attacks, at the same time obstructing the development of ceasefire monitoring mechanisms.

This means that Azerbaijan continues adhering to its initially declared political line and has put an objective of fully occupying Nagorno Karabakh,” Pashinyan said.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan