“The occupation of Shusha was an immense tragedy. The occupation of every city, every village, and the district was a great tragedy, but the occupation of Shusha was perhaps the most painful loss for us. Not only because of the strategic location of Shusha, which allowed us control of the entire region – if the work had been done properly – it also gave us the opportunity to take all necessary measures to defend Shusha even with minimum resources. The loss of Shusha caused a great shock to our people, a moral shock, and we had lived without Shusha for 28 years. However, although the Armenians have destroyed Shusha, it did not bend, it did not lose its dignity even though it was in captivity, it was able to preserve the spirit of Azerbaijan despite attempts to Armenianize it. We have returned to Shusha, and when sharing this great news with the people of Azerbaijan on 8 November, I said, “Shusha, you are free!” We have returned to our history. Of course, we will restore Shusha, revive Shusha, and the process of revival has already begun,” the Azerbaijani president said.

“Despite all the attempts of the Armenians, they failed to portray Shusha in the world as an Armenian city. Although they have been striving for this for 28 years, illegally invited many foreign visitors to Shusha, composed fables about Shusha, and changed its name, no-one believed in that because every visitor to Shusha saw with his own eyes and understood that its architectural ensemble represents the Azerbaijani architectural school. Today they falsify ancient history, write fictitious books, hold symposia and various other events. But this is relatively recent history. The founder and creator of Shusha are one of our ancestors, Panahali Khan. It was thanks to his activities and efforts that the city of Shusha was founded. Prior to that, Panahali Khan had built the Bayat fortress, the Shahbulag fortress. It is no coincidence that this city was originally called Panahabad. He gave it his own name. After that, given the clean air of Shusha, transparent as glass, this city was called Shusha (glass),” the head of state said.