Those 7 Regions Were Not Taken by Us, The Azerbaijanis Abandoned and Fled: Norat Ter-Grigoryants

Hraparak.am interviewed Norat Ter-Grigoryants, a Lieutenant General of the USSR and Russian armed forces, who served as the Chief of Staff of the Armenian Ministry of Defense from 1992 to 1995 and was acting Minister of Defense in 1993.

Below is an excerpt from the interview:

“- Armenia, as the defeated side, seems ready to concede everything so Azerbaijan does not wage war again. Now, when we are feeling the bitterness of defeat personally, many ask themselves: during the first Artsakh war when we were winning, we did not do such things. Although there were rumors that the military said: 'let's go forward, reach Baku', the supreme commander did not allow it.

- That's deception; the idea of 'we will take Baku, we will take Baku' was some sort of hooligan talk... boastful chatter. There was nothing in our plans like that. Our army was not an aggressor. No one was saying 'let's go forward,' because there was no place to advance to. The Army of Defense of Artsakh was liberating Karabakh. What was the need to go forward? First, if we had gone forward, the positions would not have been secure because going down towards the Kura River would not allow us to maintain defense. Not to mention what an illiterate political move it would have been. Why? Because we were defending ourselves, right? They attacked us. We defended and liberated Karabakh and did not allow their advancement. And those 7 regions that people mention were not specifically taken by us; they abandoned them and fled to Iran. And now, when that scum still wants 50 billion, they were the ones who left... And their air forces destroyed everything. Their pilots were Ukrainians, who were the ones destroying those settlements.

And now what is their plan? The conquest of Karabakh and Zangezur, unification with Nakhchivan and an attack on Yerevan. At that time, we did not need anything more.

- But they need it; they have already penetrated 41 km inside our borders. They, unlike us, are not generous.

- Yes, they have entered Syunik. Because they needed to shoot and eliminate. This is aggression, and therefore, our army must stand there and not allow it. After all, we did not go forward in the first Artsakh war. And they are brazen aggressors. And they started the first war by attacking us. I already mentioned their plans, and they still have the same plan: Artsakh, Zangezur-Nakhchivan, and Yerevan. That is why Ter-Petrosyan and Vazgen Sargsyan decided to create an army. This was at a time when Aliyev (the father) said that they are one nation, two states.

- So, one day will they say, 'Do we also want Yerevan?'

- Yes, it has been and remains in their plans. As a general of the Russian Armed Forces, I suggested to Levon Ter-Petrosyan to establish a Russian military base in Armenia—an enclave of the Russian Federation on Armenian territory. And we created it and called it the 102nd base. There was a general in the army, Nikolaev, whom we invited; he was Yeltsin's deputy and the commander of the border troops of the Russian Federation, and together with him, we established border troops. In other words, we closed it off with that base, and then we took control of some heights in Nakhchivan that belonged to us, and later, with the Artsakh Defense Army, we went forward and liberated Karabakh.”

For the full interview, see the original source website.