“The state border between Azerbaijan and Armenia was not identified. Because the occupation of that part of Azerbaijan was taking place in the beginning of 1990s right after the restoration of the independence of both countries. Therefore, physically and politically it was not possible to demarcate and delimitate the border. Therefore, when the second Karabakh war ended, last November, the climatic situation in that part of the area was different from other parts. It’s high mountainous and it was full of snow. So the snow started to melt in May this year. As soon as it happened, Azerbaijani forces were moving towards the state border, and took the positions on the state border based on our understanding where this border is going.

So, that was the story and unfortunately Armenia started to make claims that Azerbaijan is interfering into Armenia’s territory without any grounds. So we are standing now where we think it’s our territory. We from the very first days of the end of the Karabakh war made a proposal to Armenia to start working on delimitation, to establish a joint working group on delimitation and to clarify all the disputes on the table. During this more than one year after the war ended, there have been several attempts by Armenia to make military provocations on the state border. All of them failed. As a result of all these attempts, they lost their military positions, and Azerbaijan strengthened this position on the state border. The same happened last month, when they deliberately provoked Azerbaijani forces. It lasted several days and during the first days there was no shooting just Azerbaijani soldiers explained them that it’s not their territory, that they have to leave and they left. But they started to launch artillery attacks on us and we had several victims and several wounded. Now situation is stable. We did not plan anything ourselves. Otherwise, we would not stop. The clash on 16 November lasted less than one day. It started in the morning and ended at around 6-7 pm. So, if we planned it, we wouldn’t have stopped, because Armenia doesn’t have a military capability to stop us in any destination. We don’t have this plan, therefore we stopped,” the head of state said.