Ilham Aliyev: Armenia has not yet disclosed its losses

“We drove the enemy out of our lands and restored our territorial integrity. Therefore, the death of about 3,000 martyrs is an immense tragedy, of course,” President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said while attending a ceremony to give out apartments and cars to families of martyrs and war disabled in Khojasan settlement, Binagadi district, Baku, Report informs, citing AzerTag.

“However, Armenia has not yet disclosed its losses. According to the information we have and independent experts, their losses are at least 7,000-8,000. This is confirmed by the course of operations, as well as video footage, the Armenian military equipment we have destroyed and taken over. We either destroyed or took 336 enemy tanks as soils of war. Let them count how many people there are in a tank. We have destroyed hundreds of armored vehicles and air defense systems. We have destroyed a large number of artillery installations. There are at least three to four people around each artillery unit. If we calculate only these, the real picture emerges. Therefore, we assume that their losses exceed 7,000-8,000 people. What does this show? It shows the heroism and professionalism of our servicemen. This shows the accuracy of our operations. I want to say again that when planning each operation, I said that losses should be minimal.

“Sometimes we postponed certain operations because of this. We carried out some operations afterward because we saw that we could have many casualties. Of course, the capitulation act Armenia signed on 10 November allowed us the opportunity to save the lives of thousands of young people. If Armenia had not signed the act of capitulation and if the war had continued, we would not have stopped, of course. Because I repeatedly said during the war that we are ready to stop. In the first days of the war, I noted that the Armenian leader should give us a timetable of when they would vacate our lands. We are ready to stop the war. We do not want war. However, they only gave us a timetable when we took back Shusha and liberated more than 300 settlements. But if Armenia had not signed the act of capitulation on 10 November, we would not have stopped. Our next operational directions were clear. There would have been many casualties: in Aghdam, Kalbajar, and Lachin. They had turned Aghdam into such a fortification that it was very dangerous to enter it from the east. Of course, after the capture of Shusha, after Hadrut and Fuzuli were already in our hands, the Armenian military contingent in Aghdam would have been besieged and destroyed. But we would have had losses too. The natural terrain, climate, and weather conditions of Kalbajar and Lachin districts could make our task very difficult, especially considering that winter was on its way. Winter is very severe in those places. Snow never melts in the mountains. I can say that we managed to access the Azerbaijani-Armenian border in that direction only in May. Because there is no road, there are even no paths there at all. There were no settlements in those regions during the Soviet era. We were able to get there only after the snow had melted. Therefore, the work we did during the war was carried out with full precision. Our steps were very well calculated – we did everything on time, and we stopped on time. We have restored our territorial integrity and incurred minimal losses,” the head of state added.