Aliyev Declares Baku ‘Forced’ Pashinyan to Say ‘Karabakh is Azerbaijan’
President Ilham Aliyev and his wife, Mehriban Aliyeva, at a ‘Victory Park’ in occupied Stepanakert on Dec. 24
Claims Armenia Received Billions of Dollars in Arms During Conflict
President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan declared that his government and its citizens forced Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to say “Karabakh is Azerbaijan.”
Speaking at an event in Aghdam on Wednesday, Aliyev recalled Pashinyan’s now infamous declaration when visiting Stepanaker, he declared that “Artsakh is Armenia. Period.”
“Those who once said, ‘Karabakh is Armenia, full stop,’ at stadium in the city of Khankendi [Stepanakert] not far from here were then forced to say, ‘Karabakh is Azerbaijan!’ In other words, they did not say this of their own free will. We forced them – our people and our state did,” Aliyev declared.
“In just 44 days, we brought Armenia to its knees,” the Azerbaijani leader continued.
Aliyev went on to claim that during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict Armenia was receiving billions of dollars in free weapons. He did not elaborate on this claim.
“If sanctions had been imposed on Armenia, Yerevan would have ended the occupation much earlier,” Aliyev said.
“However, no sanctions were imposed on that small, not so rich, or even poor country. Furthermore, some countries provided Armenia with millions, billions of dollars in free weapons,” Aliyev added.
According to the Azerbaijani president, throughout the conflict, “international structures made the right decisions, but did not take any steps to implement them.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Aliyev and his wife, Azerbaijan’s Vice-President Mehriban Aliyeva, inaugurated what they called a “Victory Park” in occupied Stepanakert.
According to Azerbaijani media reports, the part has 44 steps leading from the park entrance to a so-called “Victory Arch” that reportedly symbolizes each day of the 2020 war. A special plaque has been installed at each step that recounts “the course of the war, including the names of ‘liberated’ regions,” as well as details of the military operation against Artsakh in 2023 that forced the displacement of Artsakh’s Armenian population—an event that some rights advocated call ethnic cleansing and genocide.
