During the war, I was in Stepanakert for two weeks. The second president of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, said this in an interview with several media outlets on Wednesday, in connection with the recent Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) war.

"In the second week, [the capital] Stepanakert was brutally shelled all day [by the Azerbaijanis]; it was very cruel. (…). [but] no rocket fell within a 200-meter radius of the presidential building," the second president of Armenia added.

Kocharyan said that when he was the chairman of the Artsakh State Defense Committee during the first Artsakh war in 1992-94, his official residence was the government building, which was hit about 12-13 times with grad missiles. "[But this time] not a single window of that [Artsakh presidential] building  was broken, all the windows were in place. I'm glad they [the Azerbaijanis] spared the building, but questions arise," he added.

Robert Kocharyan said that in those days of the war, the closest political teammates of Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan were in the Artsakh presidential building. "I do not think that Azerbaijan was sparing [Artsakh President] Arayik Harutyunyan (…). My impression is that they were sparing the people who were sitting in that building and, most likely, they were sparing because those people had another task, so that we would not suddenly win this war, everything would go as planned," Robert Kocharyan added.