YEREVAN. – We have not done anything to be ashamed of so as to apologize. Armenia’s third President Serzh Sargsyan stated this at his press conference Wednesday, when asked what his answer would be to the question asked to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during the recent HARDtalk program on BBC as to whether he is ready to apologize to Azerbaijan for the "war crimes" of Armenians.

"And why should we have apologized to Azerbaijan? Is it because we, following the letter of the law, were trying to exercise our right to self-determination in a peaceful way? And they [Azerbaijan] sent bandits on us and were trying to suppress us with weapons? Is it because they had set up their firing points in the settlements, and thus felt safe, shelling the entire civilian population? Until May 1992, there were days when up to 350 bombs, shells and missiles fell on Stepanakert [the capital city of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)]. Should we have apologized for that? My comrades-in-arms and I do not have any hang-ups to apologize, but we need a basis for that. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We would have been ashamed if we had not resisted, if we had not defended our homes, if we all had gathered in Yerevan and started singing ‘Stepanakert-Stepanakert;’ then we should have apologized—but not to Azerbaijan, but to our people, and first of all to the boys who were defending every meter [of our lands] at the cost of their lives. We have no reason to apologize to Azerbaijan," Sargsyan stressed.

The ex-president of Armenia noted, however, that he regrets the civilian casualties, both from the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides, but unfortunately, that is also one of the peculiarities of war. "We have not done anything to be ashamed of so as to apologize," the third president of Armenia concluded.