“Let me not talk about a specific place. As it is known, the situation has been tense lately. We can give a stable tense definition, because we have not had any serious problems since the 13th of the month, but the situation remains tense, especially in the Artsakh sector,” Deputy Defense Minister Arman Sargsyan stated at a briefing with journalists today. The journalists inquired about the enemy’s advance in the Nerkin Hand community of the Syunik province.
“There is no problem with advancement anywhere,” said Arman Sargsyan. In response to the argument that the mayor confirmed it, Arman Sargsyan said, “It is impossible to hide anything in Armenia. If there is such a problem, the Ministry of Defense will announce it.” The journalists claimed that the Ministry of Defense, without mentioning the place, had already said today that there was no progress, while the mayor and the residents said the opposite in conversations with the media, stating that they could not go to the Nerkin Hand cemetery.
Arman Sargsyan, instead of answering the question to the media journalist, said that the neutral words he had expressed in his previous interview had been transformed into “non-neutral” words. “Therefore, the press service of the Ministry of Defense will answer your question. I say that at the moment the situation is stable, but it cannot be characterized that there is no problem.” Then Arman Sargsyan announced, “They did not enter the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia.”
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During today’s discussion of the report on the process and results of the implementation of the 2021 program of the RA Government at the NA Committee on Defense and Security, the deputy of Armenia alliance Gegham Manukyan inquired, “Has our Armed Forces ever been protected from aggression? Are you changing now that you aim to have a toothless armed forces that will never be able to move from defense to counterattack?”
Deputy Minister of Defense Arman Sargsyan answered that the goal is not to have a toothless army, but to fix that the Armed Forces was not created for the purpose of aggression. “Previously, even if it was not fixed, the goal of the Armed Forces was not to have aggressive tactics. Defense also includes counterattack, but we must state that the purpose of the Armed Forces is not to provoke a war and not to show aggression towards the neighbors. There can be no question of being toothless. The state does everything to make the Armed Forces efficient and capable of counterattacking with all the means at its disposal.”
Luiza Sukiasyan
