Nagorno-Karabakh has never been a burden for the statehood of Armenia, for the Armenian people, on the contrary, it has been a lifeline, former Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has said.

Referring to the forced displacement of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, he said that such a tragedy had not befallen the Armenian people in the last 100 years.

"During that time, of course, there were many problems, there was a massacre, there were unnecessary shootings of people in the 1930s, there was a domestic war in which hundreds of thousands of Armenians died.

Of course, there was a devastating earthquake, but nothing like this tragedy. This realization, unfortunately, is not yet fully present in our society, that this tragedy was the heaviest and most painful blow to our statehood," he said.

Sargsyan emphasized that the fight for Nagorno-Karabakh has been a fight for Armenian statehood.

"When we pushed this issue forward, we pushed it forward with that awareness. Karabakh has never been a burden for the statehood of Armenia, for the Armenian people, on the contrary, it has been a lifeline,” he said.

“This tragedy deprived us of one of our pillars. First of all, it is necessary to think about it and not about targeting individuals, individual political forces. Let them target, especially the vast majority of those targeting are just slanders, over time they themselves see that they are slanders," Serzh Sargsyan added.