Levon Ter-Petrosyan: There is a Political and Psychological Problem Regarding Armenian Prisoners Held in Azerbaijan

The first President of Armenia and leader of the Armenian National Congress, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, believes that there is a political and psychological problem regarding the Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan. According to Armenpress, during an interview on Public Television with host Petros Ghazaryan, Levon Ter-Petrosyan noted that the political aspect is that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is convinced that the current Armenian government will not win the upcoming elections, and taking advantage of their weakness, he is trying to extract as much as possible from them.

“The psychological aspect is the degraded situation in Azerbaijan for 30 years. Defeat is a heavy burden; we have just lost, and you feel the psychological state that prevails. For 30 years, they were, in fact, defeated and were in a heavy psychological state; the same thing that the Armenian people demand from Nikol today, the Azerbaijani people have been demanding for years. After victory, I do not understand why Azerbaijan is engaging in such actions. The winning side is usually magnanimous; the victor does not hate the defeated, it’s the defeated who hates the winner. This is what Aliyev should have done; he didn't,” he stated.

The first President reminded that after the victory of the Armenian side in the first Artsakh war, when both sides had prisoners, he unilaterally decided to return the Azerbaijani prisoners. “Vazgen Sargsyan and Serzh Sargsyan were with me; they said they wouldn’t give a thing, I said, relax, I know Heydar Aliyev, our prisoners returned on the same plane. I answered your question; I have nothing more to add,” Levon Ter-Petrosyan concluded.