BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 27. We proved to the whole world that Karabakh is Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani people would never put up with this occupation, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Victorious Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev said addressing a solemn ceremony to hand over the battle flag to the commando military unit as part of his visit to Kalbajar district, Trend reports.
"We will forever live as a victorious nation and as a victorious state. But in order to achieve this glorious victory, we had to work day and night and gather strength. Because the power factor is in the forefront in the present-day world. The norms and principles of international law do not work. In fact, international organizations continue to operate only formally. Justice was on our side, international law was on our side, and our lands were under occupation. But no-one told the occupier, “Get out of Azerbaijan!” Therefore, we had to gather strength to fulfill this task on our own, and we did exactly that. We gathered political strength and increased our power in the international arena. We proved to the whole world that Karabakh is Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani people would never put up with this occupation. We gathered economic power and gained economic independence. If we had not had economic independence, if we had not had these opportunities, how could we wage war? Therefore, economic independence and rapid development brought us closer to victory.
We attached great importance to patriotism. Many measures have been taken to educate the younger generation in the spirit of patriotism, and we have achieved this. Today, the youth of Azerbaijan are patriotic and attached to their Motherland, and the Patriotic War showed this to the whole world. The main factor that led us to the Victory was the national spirit, dignity, love of the Motherland, and this was done by representatives of the younger generation, the young people who grew up in the years of independence. They did so by sacrificing their lives and facing death. The memory of our dear martyrs will always live in our hearts. Therefore, patriotism, discipline, economic power, political standing and, of course, the supply of our Armed Forces with modern weapons – it was a combination of all these factors that preconditioned the outcome of the second Karabakh war. In a matter of 44 days, we drove the enemy out of our lands, brought it to its knees, forced it to wave the white flag and leave Kalbajar of its own accord. Kalbajar was liberated without a single shot being fired. We would have liberated Kalbajar anyway because the back of the Armenian army had already been broken, but there would have been many losses. In the 44 days of the war, we brought the Armenian army to a situation in which they had no other option," the head of state said.