Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has declared that the war in Nagorno-Karabakh in the fall of 2020 could not have been prevented or stopped without Shushi – the Armenian city bombarded and later captured by Azerbaijan.

Pashinyan made the remarks in his speech to lawmakers on Thursday, April 14. According to him, Shushi had been on the negotiating table since 1996.

"If we wanted to surrender Karabakh, if we had followed the negotiation logic left by [ex-President] Serzh Sargsyan to the end, we would have surrendered Karabakh. We were told: you surrendered Shushi. The war was for Shushi. We were told: it was necessary to prevent it. Haven't we thought about how to prevent it? It was impossible to stop or prevent the war without Shushi," Pashinyan said.

The PM's speech from a day ago was in the center of much discussions and Pashinyan claimed on Thursday that his speech "gave Armenia and Artsakh space, while during the entire period of the negotiation process, Armenia and Artsakh had been deprived of political and diplomatic space."

“We are opening the way for Armenia and Artsakh, we are opening the way for preserving statehood. The people of Karabakh must live in Karabakh, must have rights, freedoms, status. And yes, we have created this space. Our sacrifices were for the sake of opening up prospects for Armenia and Artsakh, because the 1998 package deprived the Armenians of space. We are paving a road that will not allow our people to be sacrificed,” Pashinyan said.

He stressed that Armenia is a sovereign country, and it is necessary to return to Armenia its right to make decisions.