Special operations against the cynical opponent
The ten-day nightmare around downing of the Armenian helicopter by Azerbaijani is over. The Armenian side having the grounds of impossibility to solve the problem of the helicopter crew diplomatically in the arsenal, gave an adequate response to Azerbaijan’s cynical and impudent posture. On November 22, as reported by the Defense Army press service, bearing no losses in the result of performance of special actions, the DA had dismissed the opponent’s two soldiers. On 12 November, NKR Defense Army was performing special operation on the place of falling of Mi-24 helicopter downed by Azerbaijan.
According to the official press release, “In the result of combat task, the corpse of one of the grew-members of the helicopter, remains of two pilots and some necessary parts of the helicopter were pulled out from the place of the accident.” In the result of special operation for pulling out the helicopter crew-members, the Azerbaijani side had great losses, wrote Defense Ministry Spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan on his Facebook page. “In fact, the losses of the Azerbaijani side are many and so many that the brigade commander’s was resigned from his office. Interestingly, was he dismissed because of these losses or the helicopter destruction?”- reads the post. Artsrun Hovhannisyan qualified the occurrence as a “world-class excellent operation.” “Given the extremely large fire if the opponent and other counteractions, these actions were unprecedented by nature and complexity, the performance was just brilliant, given also not small number of losses of the opponent, who had set the trap. We would hear their names few more days, who, naturally, would die of various disasters.”
In the result of shooting of the Armenian side on November 20, the night of November 21 in the place of downing of the Armenian helicopter, Azerbaijani army had two victims, reported MD to NEWS.am. One of the victims was a spotlighter and the other was a sniper. They were trying to approach the helicopter, but the Armenian side had prevent it. The Minister of Defense Seyran Ohanyan commenting on the operation of pulling out the helicopter crew noted, “Our neighbor’s tough position, lack of intelligence and according to the humanitarian norms after downing of the helicopter, refusal to pulling out the pilots had compelled the Armenian side to go for special operations.” According to S. Ohanyan, the Armenian side operated skilfully, the place of falling of the helicopter was observed and the opponent’s trap was destroyed. S. Ohanyan assured that henceforth the Armenian side would give a response to the opponent in case of any provocation, in the minimum, an equivalent punishment. “In this event, we are going to intensify our service in the contact line – monitoring, detection and destruction events, which will be directed only towards those who would try to violate,” said Ohanyan, emphasizing that “the Armenian people are not used to cut everything short and organize provocations but we will give a proper response to any of this kind of provocation.”
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In the official video of the NKR Defense Minister, Movses Hakobyan had provided details about the special operations. “Azerbaijan has rejected all of these organizations, moreover, it has not allowed to carry out observations there, on the contrary, it is constantly trying to keep this section under fire, and why not, since the helicopter was very close to their positions, also to evacuate the corpses. All of these measures, which did not produce results, we were forced to apply for special operations, and the Defense Army’s special detachments have performed it.”
Azerbaijani authorities are in deep depression
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry, as we could assume, denied the information about Armenia’s special operation. “The information about implementing special operation in the place of falling of the helicopter by Armenia’s armed forces, as well as about the losses of the Azerbaijani armed forces is completely groundless and is a regular provocation,” announced the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry implies that the Armenian side can demonstrate “corpses of previous victims by presenting them as the corpses of crew-members of the helicopter.”
Note that father of the helicopter crewmember Lieutenant Azat Sahakyan has recognized his son’s body. In the meantime, the NKR Defense Ministry issued a statement about the fact of special operation by Azerbaijan regarding pulling out of bodies of crewmembers of the helicopter. “FYI, the Azerbaijani propaganda machine and its supporting media, Defense Ministry of NKR informed that the evacuation operation of the Armenian destructed helicopter was carried out not only a day before, but also on the day when the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced about the losses in the front line, presenting them as victims by Armenian snipers. As a reminder, we must add that the DM had disseminated one of the statements of such content on 20 November. This trick of Azerbaijani propaganda is another attempt of hiding their own helplessness,” says the report.
The military officers of special detachment of armed forces of Nagorno-Karabakh were prepared for the special operations for days, the military experts of Armenia had planned everything in advance, examined all the details, and then passed to actions, – reported the NEWS.am source in the NKR Defense Army. According to the source, Azerbaijan knew that Armenians are going after the downed helicopter, hence, they had set a trap around the helicopter, but the Armenian soldiers had first eliminated the trap, and then had approached the helicopter. In the meantime, they had destroyed the Azerbaijani holding the spotlight and the serviceman standing next to him, they did it quietly, so that the shift of the Azerbaijani side did not know anything. The First Deputy Defense Minister of Armenia, Davit Tonoyan, on November 22, met with the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Andrzej Kasprzyk, at whose request, he had introduced the details of the special operations implemented by NKR DA detachments with regard to evacuation of corpses of helicopter crewmembers downed by Azerbaijani Armed Forces from the place of scene.
The Azerbaijani government authorities are surely in deep depression. After making the issue unsolvable through diplomatically more than a week, Baku received an adequate response. It was done with awareness of international structures interested in the situation. In this regard, the Armenian side totally provided itself from the possible criticism to aggravate the situation. Of course, it was initially clear who is responsible for downing of the training helicopter and afterwards for keeping the site under arrest for days, however, in any case, the slow hurried tactics of the Armenian side was justified. Now, official Baku, appearing in its lured trap, will post factum begin making non-normalization of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict the main topic, along with official Ankara. All of this will be spiced by the speeches about the “strength” of the Azerbaijani army and the paces of the development of the country. This propaganda trick has already put into action. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has praised his county’s “democracy” in the Twitter microblog. “Our political system is the model of the European system”. RA Foreign Ministry Spokesman Tigran Balayan has referred to this post, saying, “A Comedy Hour in Azerbaijani President’s Twitter news feed.” Now, on the one hand, we have Aliyev giving a blow to the OSCE Minsk Group, on the other hand, the international community, confronted with Aliyev’s unconstraint regime.
Emma GABRIELYAN
