YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 16, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Army of Artsakh fought heroically until the last second, but the town of Shushi fell because the Azeri sabotage teams succeeded in invading the city, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said during an online news conference.

“Many are alleging that Shushi was surrendered. I read the statement made by the President of Artsakh that more than 100 bodies have been retrieved from the outskirts of Shushi. If Shushi was surrendered, then under whose orders were these soldiers fighting? Moreover, let me tell you that there was some statement alleging that there are concrete data, names, who made conspiracies around Shushi. Law enforcement agencies have summoned the authors of this statement and tried to obtain concrete information on these conspirators and what conspiracy they are talking about. As far as I know the author of this statement avoided to give an answer. If someone announces that treason has happened and they have information, but then refuse to give concrete information to law enforcement it turns out to be participation in treason. If someone says they don’t trust the law enforcement, let them publicly announce what happened in reality. And what happened in reality is what has been officially stated, unfortunately there were Azeri sabotage team invasions into the city, and we lost Shushi,” the PM said.

Pashinyan reminded an earlier statement of his, when he said that in the past whenever any compromise option was becoming acceptable for the Armenian side, the Azeri side was rejecting it momentarily.

“It is very important to understand whether or not we could’ve avoided war, yes, if we were to agree to surrender 7 territories including Shushi to Azerbaijan, but was this the policy we wanted to pursue? No, it wasn’t. The Defense Army of Artsakh and the government of Armenia, our military decided to accept this challenge. Unfortunately it didn’t bring the desired results. From the first day many figures were calling for surrendering territories at the cost of stopping the war, but today they are accusing us in treason for doing the very same thing. One thing needs to be realized here, there wasn’t a substantial difference of early or late, essentially. Yes, the condition of surrendering Shushi was brought forward, if not from the beginning then in the preliminary period. The Artsakh authorities, the Defense Army took this path, as long as there was a change to defend and fight until the end. They fought heroically until the last second. Unfortunately the task wasn’t solved. Yes, we are responsible for not being able in two years to fill what wasn’t filled for decades,” he said.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan