Prior to Shushi, in all possible scenarios to stop the war, Shushi had to be surrendered without a fight, says Prime Minister

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, in an interview with Petros Ghazaryan on Public Television, stated that there were two circumstances that prevented him from addressing the public sooner. The first circumstance was the prospect of changing the situation, and the second was the price of stopping the war.

“You see how painful it is for all of us to accept that three territories must be returned, how painful it would be, especially considering that according to the assessments of both the General Staff and the leadership of Artsakh, it was no longer possible to hold those territories. Or, it might be possible to hold part of Kelbajar, but the entire territory of Artsakh would be lost. The decision was made at the moment when it was clear that the fight was no longer meaningful. There had never been such a situation before. Our army, the armed forces, the General Staff fought until the end, until the last day, the last second, and minute,” the Prime Minister said.

When the setbacks began on the battlefield, the issue was to make a breakthrough, for which everything possible was done. The decision was made at a time when it was understood that it was pointless to frame that problem.
“What is that point where we recorded this? That point is the fall of Shushi. In all possible scenarios for stopping the war prior to Shushi, Shushi had to be surrendered without a fight. I have stated that we cannot surrender Shushi; it has special significance,” the Prime Minister emphasized.

According to him, in the 25 years of negotiations, the only concrete point was the surrender of 7 areas, while the other points were vague. “And very often, both in the past and now, the logic of the war has been discussed in terms of a so-called ‘scenario.’ But the peculiarity of this is that this war, at least on the Armenian side, was meant not to implement that scenario but to resist it,” the Prime Minister noted.