We proposed an agreement with Azerbaijan so that two districts, Kalbajar and Lachin, and the whole of Karabakh would remain under the de facto Armenian jurisdiction. But the Armenian leadership would not agree to this, although we tried to convince the Armenian leadership for decades. There were different alternatives, but in the end it all came down to this. When we asked them, ‘What are you going to do?’, they said, ‘We are going to fight.’ In the end, it came down to the situation we have today. But this is not just about the outcome of the latest conflict. The point is that the Armenian leadership essentially recognized Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over Karabakh and put it on paper in its Prague statement.”
That is, the Russian President essentially admitted that Russia had intended to give Kalbajar, Lachin and even Shusha to Armenia. Not a word was said about this being a temporary measure, after which Azerbaijan’s borders would be restored in full. But, as we can now understand from Putin’s words, it was the Armenian leadership that disagreed and wanted more. Once again, those plans were thwarted.
The Russian President did not specify whether this scenario had been discussed with Baku. He also did not specify what Moscow and Yerevan finally agreed on, where they “wanted to fight”. However, flights of transport planes from Russia to Armenia right before the 44-day war, statements of Armenian politicians about “a new war for new territories”, open discussions of plans to take Ganja, Barda and even Gabala (that would give Armenia “territorial contact” with Russia) give us an idea of the outlines of those agreements.
However, those plans were smashed to smithereens. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev did not yield an inch of land in the negotiations. And when Armenia, in alliance with Russia, tried to use arguments of force again, he put the new Azerbaijani army on the battlefield. Our country under the leadership of its Supreme Commander-in-Chief won a brilliant victory both on the battlefield and in diplomacy. A victory that no one expected from us. A victory that became a reality because of the political genius of President Ilham Aliyev. Now Azerbaijan is not the only one who realizes this.
