Russian President Vladimir Putin has admitted that he does not understand why Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rejected Azerbaijan’s condition for the return of peaceful refugees to the city of Shushi, TASS reports.
According to Putin, the issue of Shushi had arisen during that conflict, during that crisis. “On 19-20 October I had telephone conversations with both President Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinyan. At that time, Azerbaijan’s armed forces had established control over a number of territories in the southern part of Karabakh,” the Russian President recounted. “Overall, I had managed to convince President Aliyev that military operations could be stopped, but a mandatory condition on his part was the return of refugees, including to the city of Shushi.”
“Unexpectedly for me, the position of our Armenian colleagues was formulated in such a way that this was unacceptable for them, and Prime Minister Pashinyan said that he sees a threat in this for Armenia and Karabakh. Even now it is incomprehensible to me what that threat was, given that the return of peaceful civilians was envisaged, when the Armenian side was to establish control over that territory of Karabakh, including Shushi, and given the presence of our peacekeepers,” Putin noted. “The Prime Minister told me at the time: ‘No, we cannot accept that, we are fighting, we are at war.’ For that reason, statements about some treason against him are groundless,” Putin is convinced. “The issue is different — whether it was right or wrong, but on this matter there could not even be any talk of some treason,” the Russian President is convinced.
