'During the April battles in 2016, we gave Armenia a chance. After the crushing defeat, the then head of the junta Sargsyan (the third President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan - Ed) personally promised me to return the land. At the time when the April battles were going on, day and night they called Moscow, the chief of the General Staff of Russia, begged, they say, tell Azerbaijan to stop the war. We settled on the conditions so that negotiations would begin immediately and they did begin,' Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said at a meeting with the awarded servicemen at the War Trophy Park, Azerbaijan State News Agency informs.
The head of state said that a month after the end of the war, a meeting at the level of foreign ministers of the Minsk Group co-chairing countries had already taken place in Vienna: 'Why was there no meeting at this level before that? But immediately after we hit the Armenians in the April battles, a meeting took place in May. A summit was held in Russia in June. Sargsyan promised me that he needed two weeks to resolve the issue. "I promise I will work it out," he said. I said ok and he left. After that, in Yerevan, either they organised it themselves, or an incident happened on its own - they seized a police station. He refused to fulfil his promise under the pretext of these events. And again we were deceived. Not only by Sargsyan, but by all of them.
The Nakhchivan operation in 2018, again, we taught them a lesson, showed once again that their end would be bad, they would be destroyed. This also did not become a lesson. Sargsyan was removed from power. A new government has come to Armenia. A month later, after a successful operation on the border in Nakhchivan, we took important strategic positions and already completely controlled the road to Karabakh. During the war - now it is not a secret - we knew what was going on in Nagorno-Karabakh. We could cut this road at any moment. However, this was not necessary. This also did not become a lesson. But the new government also asked us for time,' said the President of Azerbaijan.
