During a press conference today on the fighting along the Artsakh-Azerbaijan border, Artsakh President Arayik Harutyunyan said there had been tangible changes in positions on the frontline.

Harutyunyan siaid there were very active large-scale military operations mainly in Omar, along the Mrav mountain range, in the north, in Yeghnikner and Mataghis.

He said intense battles had taken place in the southeast, in the Arax Valley, in the direction of Fizuli.  

Harutyunyan said that Turkey's participation in the fighting will end in failure.

"We have an 18-year-old young man who has already managed to hit nine enemy armored vehicles. We have participants of the Artsakh struggle for survival, the first Artsakh wars, the April wars, fighting comrades, who were able to capture three pieces of enemy equipment in two days and are now using it against the enemy. We have a compatriot who, taking the grenades, threw himself into the enemy's trench, damaging our enemy, blowing himself up together with the enemy soldiers. We have a compatriot who left his comfortable life in Europe and managed to get to the front in a few hours,” Harutyunyan said.

Touching upon the intervention of the Russian side during the 2016 April War, Harutyunyan noted that at that time Artsakh was fighting against Azerbaijan, and Russia was able to persuade Azerbaijan and to ask Armenia for a ceasefire. Today Russia must talk to Armenia and Turkey, saying he does not know the extent to which the Russian government is ready to talk to the Turkish government.

"Artsakh has never been captured and never will. In four days, almost as much enemy equipment was hit as was hit during the first Artsakh war," Harutyunyan said.

He added that mercenaries have never benefited any country, and that the same mercenaries will spell trouble for the people of Azerbaijan.

Harutyunyan aid that this war is also directed against Iran.

"We know what regional problems are connected with northern Iran," he said.