Third President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan answered several questions of public interest in four short videos released on Friday.
The videos entitled "Let's speak openly: Serzh Sargsyan on April War" is the ex-president's first direct communication with the public since 2018.
Question: What prevented you from speaking out?
Serzh Sargsyan: I kept silent for a long time because I didn’t want to worsen the situation in our country, deepening the polarization and further dividing our society. 2018 was a very emotional year. Chaos and aggression were growing day by day, making only our enemies happy. And in that emotional environment a significant part of our society was not ready to hear simple truths. It took time for everyone to understand the situation on their own. But we will talk about all this in detail.
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Serzh Sargsyan: The truth is the following: in April 2016, our aggressive neighbor [Azerbaijan] attacked us and lost.
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Question: You were accused of losing 800 hectares of land during the April War. Was it really a victory?
Serzh Sargsyan: Yes, it was definitely a victory.
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Question: Why did so many Armenian soldiers and officers lose their lives?
Serzh Sargsyan: I sincerely regret that it was not possible to save everyone. My thoughts and emotions are with every family. It is unrealistic to expect that we will not suffer casualties during hostilities. But we all witnessed how heroically our soldiers and commanders fought. 75 of them remained forever young, sacrificing their lives for Artsakh and Armenia.
Question: How would you assess the operations of the Armenian army?
Serzh Sargsyan: According to foreign intelligence, we inflicted four to five times more losses of soldiers, officers, including senior officers, and weaponry to the adversary.
Even our opponents have recently started claiming that the Azerbaijanis, according to their data, have lost more than 1,000 soldiers. After such a great battle and victory, we were full of grief, but at the same time, we were proud of our soldiers, officers, generals, all those who took part in that heroic battle.
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