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Artsakh President Arayik Harutyunyan addressed the nation on Tuesday, revealing the reasons for the decision to stop the war.

He reminded that in the morning of November 8 he posted a photo from the Stepanakert Square and stated that it had been one of the hardest dawns of his life. “Why I announced it without opening the brackets? Because on 7 November we completely lost control over the town of Shushi,” the president said in a live video on Facebook.

“Today I want to announce that I had the hardest night of my life in case when I experienced very difficult days in 1992 and 1994, losing many relatives. But we had to make such a decision yesterday,” he explained.

“Why? First of all, it was based on the military situation. As a result of 43 days of fighting, we lost the Fizuli, Jabrayil, Kubatlu, Zangelan, Hadrut regions, some part of the Martuni region, the Askeran region, and most importantly, Shushi.

“The battles took place on the outskirts of Stepanakert, 2-3 kilometers away. If the military operations had continued at such a pace, we would have lost entire Artsakh within several days, we would have suffered many more casualties, because already the fighting, moving somewhere in the rear of our frontline, would have had irreversible consequences,” the president sated.

Harutyunyan stressed that for several days it seemed the Artsakh forces managed to defend themselves against the Azerbaijani UAVs, but in the past two days the Azerbaijani forces employed new technologies and UAVs, inflicting great losses on the Armenian troops.

“We had great human losses in Martuni region during the past few hours yesterday. Why did we fail to succeed? We all, yes, will answer for it, because we knew that our Defense Army had needs, that problem exists,” he stated.