parry
v.v. to push away a weapon or an attack with your own weapon. You can also use it when you avoid answering a difficult question by giving a clever or indirect reply.
v. to ward off a weapon or blow with a countermove; by extension, to evade or deflect a question or argument. Transitive when used with a direct object, though it can appear intransitively in technical fencing contexts.
The fencer managed to parry the sudden attack.
During the press conference, the minister managed to parry every difficult question about the budget cuts.
The experienced lawyer was able to parry the prosecutor's aggressive line of questioning with a series of calm, technical objections that frustrated the opposition.
The verb is transitive and typically takes a direct object representing the attack or the question being avoided.