Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan today appeared at a session of the 2020 Artsakh war factfinding commission in Yerevan, claiming that he agreed to start talks to end hostilities three days before the November 9 ceasefire but only if Baku agreed to exchange the region of Hadrut with Askeran.

By November 6, 2020, Azerbaijani troops had seized Hadrut, a town and region in the Nagorno Karabakh.

Pashinyan said he was compelled to sign the November 9 ceasefire because Azerbaijani troops had occupied the town of Shushi and threatened the Karabakh capital of Stepanakert, a few kilometers away.

Pashinyan said he had received conflicting news about the imminent fall of Shushi and that he ordered that the town be fortified in advance.

He said Baku refused the Hadrut-Askeran swap resulting in a ceasefire draft calling for the return of seven regions outside Nagorno Karabakh proper to Azerbaijan and the creation of the Lachin Corridor under the supervision of Russian peacekeepers.

Pashinyan said he signed the draft text on the morning of November 9 but that Baku balked, putting forward new demands, including the return of Azerbaijani enclaves in Armenia’s Tavush Province.

“I announced it was impossible to sign such a document. And it was officially recorded that we were not signing a document," said Pashinyan, adding the enclaves’ clause was later removed.

He testified that by midnight November 9 Azerbaijani drones appeared over Stepanakert, convincing him to sign the ceasefire agreement hammered out with Russian intervention.

"Finally, after long and complicated discussions, I signed the document that you all know, which of course was worse than the version I signed in the morning, but it was better than the other proposed versions, one of which provided for the Meghri corridor, the other for the return of the Tavush enclaves,” Pashinyan said. 

The Armenian prime minister said he rejected a proposal, Russian Presdient Vladimir made during an October 19 phone call, to end the war  because it called for the return of all Azerbaijani refugees to their former homes in Nagorno Karabakh, including Shushi.. Pashinyan said Putin told him that Baku always wanted to build a new road connecting Shushi to Azerbaijan, which would be outside the Lachin Corridor.

In addition, Pashinyan said the proposal called for Russian peacekeepers to be stationed  in Meghri in order to connect Nakhichevan to Azerbaijan, which he was categorically against.

Armenia’s opposition parliamentary factions have boycotted the work of the fact-finding commission whose mandate is soon to expire.