Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan made a passionate televised appeal to the Armenian people on Saturday afternoon (3 October) as battles raged on between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone. In his message Pashinyan told the Armenian people, "We are facing a fateful chapter in our history".
Prime minister Pashinyan said:
"For over a week now, the Artsakh Defense Army and thousands of Armenian have been engaged in a life and death struggle for the sacred land of Artsakh. As of now, we already have significant human losses, both military and civilian, large numbers of military equipment are no longer usable, but the adversary still has not been able to solve any of its strategic issues.
The vigilance with which our soldiers, officers, generals and veterans are resisting the criminal attacks is unbelievable. Our soldiers and volunteers do not spare anything and are showing incredible examples of heroism. Hundreds of Azerbiajani armored vehicles, dozens of helicopters and airplanes, hundreds of UAVs have been destroyed; their human losses are beyond several thousand.
Intense fighting continues all the way through the Line of Contact. In some locations, the Defense Army troops are in challenging positions, in others they are in control of the situation."
Thye Armenian prime minister made a passionate appeal to the Armenian people. He said
"Victory and only victory is the ending that we see at the end of this struggle. Today, a few hours ago, the Artsakh Defense Army launched a powerful counteroffensive and recorded significant advances and destroyed several special units of Azerbaijan. No matter how many mercenaries have been deployed over there: the Azerbaijani side cannot compete with the Armenian will to win and live. With joint efforts we will break the adversary's backbone, so that it could never raise its murderous hands on us, so that its bloody gaze could never fall upon our people."
The semi official Armenpress news agency carried the full speech in English. You can read it here.
source: commonspace.eu with Armenpress news agency (Yerevan)