June 9, 2021 - 16:24 AMT
Pashinyan: Yerevan will send PoW swap proposal to Baku

Acting Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has confirmed his readiness to exchange his son Ashot for Armenian prisoners of war still being held in Azerbaijan. During a visit to the province of Shirak on Wednesday, June 9, Pashinyan said Armenia was going to send the proposal to Azerbaijan.

He stressed that he has already instructed the country's authorities to convey to the Azerbaijani side his proposal regarding the swap.

"My son is ready to go to Baku as a hostage on the condition that all our prisoners of war will be returned. But I want you to never think that this is the only direction and a desperate step on our part to solve the problem of our PoWs. Very intensive work is being done," Pashinyan told supporters.

Tensions are growing in Armenian politics after acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and ex-President Serzh Sargsyan traded insults over the country's failure to have Azerbaijan release the prisoners of war and other detainees.

Sargsyan offered Pashinyan to exchange his son for the captives, maintaining that only then would Pashinyan be dealing with the issue of the return of Armenian prisoners of war on a daily basis. Pashinyan responded that he is ready to exchange his son Ashot for all the Armenians captured by Azerbaijan during and after the end of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.