“Pay attention, I signed the text of the tripartite declaration not at midnight on November 9, but on the morning of November 8-9,” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said, presenting details of the negotiations to end the war in 2020.
He said he conducted those negotiations through Russian President Vladimir Putin, “I had about 20 phone conversations with him on November 8 and 9, and about 60 during the entire war.”
The Prime Minister said the Armenian side offered Aghdam in exchange for Hadrut, “Ultimately, as a result of the discussions, we reached a text that did not say anything about Shushi, about creating a corridor through the territory of Armenia, but talked about the cessation of hostilities, the return of 7 regions, the creation of the Lachin corridor, and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers there and in Nagorno-Karabakh. On the morning of November 9, I signed that text,” he said, drawing attention to the fact that he signed the text of the tripartite declaration not at midnight on November 9 but in the morning. “It turned out that Azerbaijan did not sign that text and put forward several new demands. The culmination of the process was on the evening of November 9, when it turned out that Azerbaijan was proposing new additions to the practically agreed text.” He said the signed text was out of circulation, and they negotiated again. “When the President of the Russian Federation said that Azerbaijan proposes to add a clause on the return of the Tavush enclaves to the text, I announced that signing such a document is out of the question. It was officially recorded that we do not sign a document. After some time, it turned out that an agreement was reached to remove that point from the document; at the same time, around midnight, news began to come about the activation of combat operations and that there were many anti-aircraft missiles in the sky of Stepanakert. In the end, after complex, long discussions, I signed the document that is known to everyone, which was, of course, worse than the version of the morning but better than the other options offered, one of which provided for the Meghri Corridor, the other for the return of the Tavush enclaves.”.
