"The 44-day war of our glorious Army is the war of the 21st century. We were preparing for this war and we did not hide it. I have repeatedly said, including in my meetings with the military, that if the enemy does not leave our lands voluntarily, we will force them out of our lands, the force will play a role, and so it happened, every day of the 44-day war was a day of victory.
The President of Azerbaijan, Muzaffar Supreme Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev voiced these views at a meeting with the military after raising our tricolor flag in Shusha. "Every day we moved forward. We did not even step back one day. This is a very rare sight in wars. There are attacks in wars, there are setbacks, there are maneuvers, and we were moving forward every day. Every week we liberated dozens of settlements from the occupiers. As a result, we liberated more than 300 settlements and Shusha by inflicting crushing blows on the enemy.
We forced them and in just 20 days they withdrew their troops from Agdam, Lachin and Kalbajar regions, were rejected from our lands and we returned, "he said. The head of state said: “From the beginning of the war, I have been telling you to leave our land and make an immediate commitment. I myself said that the Armenian leadership must take this responsibility, give history that at some point I will leave the lands and I will stop the war. Otherwise, we will go to the end. Despite all the pressure, all the phone calls, all the threats, I said that we will go to the end, we will drive the enemy out of our lands. We did, we went, we drove, and the enemy was forced to sign an act of capitulation on November 10, and thus the war ended.