“Isn’t one of the objectives for all of this that we succumb to any provocation? Isn’t this a provocation aimed at escalation of the conflict zone, and the suspension of activities resumed by the Minsk Group, especially when Russia and Turkey having left their imprint in these military exercises are excessively interested in change of the format of the Minsk Group?”, said the Head for the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs, Stepan Safaryan, in the conversation with Aravot.am, referring to the incident of downing of Mi-24 helicopter of Nagorno-Karabakh Air Force by Azerbaijani armed forces in the eastern part of the airspace of Azerbaijani border. He doubts that all of this could be planned in advance, and that Azerbaijan was drawn into instigation to provoke and Armenia obviously passes to the response of direct attack and the consequences be clearly used as what they desired for.
To our observation that there are opinions that in the result of this incident, the Armenian side was disgraced because an adequate safety and protection system was not developed, Mr. Safaryan responded, “We need to clearly know at which section the incident has happened. At this point, people are talking about the incident happened on neutral territory, initially even about crossing the line of Contact. The Azerbaijani side videos showed that the incident definitely did not occur in their territory. If it happened in the neutral zone or even close to the border, the people who were responsible for the military exercises should have know one thing clearly that the sensitivity on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone is too high to any incident. Perhaps, no such thing would occur a few years ago as the conflict dynamics was different.”
Stepan Safaryan raises a question of why during the planning of the event, it was not considered that, for example, similar reaction could happen already in the neutral area. Mr. Safaryan sees recurrence of the June scenario and mentions, “The current dynamics of the conflict almost repeats what we had in June. In June, the Azerbaijani side conduced wide variety of military exercises. They were military exercises in participation of 13.5 million personnel and the Karvachar diversion was the component part of these exercises. Resumption risks were too great and I would like to understand why the organizers of the military exercises, the planners, did not know about it. On October, Azerbaijan conducted 35-thousand personnel military exercises with Turkey, which was followed by the Russian exercises in Armenia. Exercise, moreover, too close to the conflict zone, already become an indicator of risk of war because the party in conflict is not always trying to show off its muscles. This is already a new degree, which the conflict enters into.”
To our observation that perhaps the Armenian side was busy with negotiations with Russians on organizing a parade of Russia army, hence, it could not control the situation, Mr. Safaryna responded, “Starting from analytic centers up to respective Defense Ministry departments and MFA should have done this analysis to know what type, how and where to conduct the exercises.” To our question of whether it was possible to avoid losses in the event of correct strategy, Mr. Safaryan responded, “Of course, it was possible. Moreover, they were to realize that publishing the number of 47 thousand in this parade of demonstration of muscles as a number of staff participating in joint military exercises, present the whole scenario in detail, they should have realized that it was already a step ahead and a glove to the Azerbaijani side.”
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Later on, he reminded the tough statement by the Azerbaijani Defense Minister two days ago and outraged, “Who controls it? Who cares about it? Why it should not be considered? To enter the neutral zone under this evident condition of tension. It is still an open question for me. Pertaining to planning of exercises, Armenia has had an incomprehensible and unknown mistake. Turning to the next steps, Mr. Safaryan said, “even though Armenia’s Ministry of Defense had announced that “the answer is going to be painful for Azerbaijan,” but the time chosen for the move is very important.” Stepan Safaryan warns that perhaps the incident was a provocation, and in case of counterattacks, already in the arena of international campaign, we can appear in the investigation mechanisms in a different light. With this regard, Stepan Safaryan remembered Arakel Movsisyan as a military defense expert and said, “I do not know whether Arakel Movsisyan is documented as a Defense Minister expert or not, but if earlier no shame was brought and it was announced that we can have such an expert in the Defense Ministry, nothing more should be expected from it.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
