YEREVAN, February 17. /ARKA/. It were not the Armenian army and the people that were defeated in the Artsakh war by Azerbaijan, but the incompetent Armenian government, ex-president Serzh Sargsyan said in an interview with ArmNews TV channel.
Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev argued earlier that it were ex-presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan and the army they had built that were defeated in the war, not Armenia and its current army.
“Aliyev, I’m sure, always dreamed of defeating us. His dream never came true. We defeated Aliyev’s father in the 90s, Aliyev lost the four-day war in April 2016. Aliyev lost the entire negotiation process when I was president from 2008 to 2018. And I am sure that he has an insatiable demand to defeat me in something,’ Sargsyan said.
According to him, Aliyev is not completely psychologically satisfied with the outcome of the war and knows who he won and how he got this victory.
“Aliyev did not defeat the Armenian army, Aliyev did not defeat the Armenian people, Aliyev defeated the current incompetent Armenian authorities. And it were not the Armenian army and the Armenian people that were defeated. It were the prime minister of Armenia and his team who surrendered secretly and capitulated,” he said.
The ex-president stressed that the president of Azerbaijan is right in some way: both Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan as well as many other people, many generals and officers played a great role in building Armenian armed forces. And what role did the “capitulator” play in it. He even did not serve in the Armenian army for a day.
“In this regard, perhaps Aliyev is right. But if you approach from his point of view, it means that the capitulator was defeated by Mutalibov and Elchibey (ex presidents of Azerbaijan). What Aliyev said is illogical,” Serzh Sargsyan said.
On September 27, 2020, Azerbaijani armed forces, backed by Turkey and foreign mercenaries and terrorists, attacked Nagorno-Karabakh along the entire front line using rocket and artillery weapons, heavy armored vehicles, military aircraft and prohibited types of weapons such as cluster bombs and phosphorus weapons.
After 44 days of the war, on November 9, the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a statement on the cessation of all hostilities. According to the document, the parties stopped at where they were at that time. The town of Shushi, the districts of Agdam, Kelbajar and Lachin were handed over to Azerbaijan, with the exception of a 5-kilometer corridor connecting Karabakh with Armenia.
A Russian peacekeeping contingent was deployed along the contact line in Karabakh and along the Lachin corridor. Internally displaced persons and refugees are returning to Karabakh and adjacent regions, prisoners of war, hostages and other detained persons and bodies of the dead are being exchanged.-