Hovsep Khurshudyan, the Head of the “Free Citizen” NGO, explains the EU observation mission’s conflicting information about the incident in Gegharkunik on August 15 with the desire not to strain the situation.
Let’s remind you that the RA Ministry of Defense announced, “On August 15, around 12:20 p.m., the units of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces opened fire from small arms at the EU observers patrolling in the direction of Verin Shorzha and their car.”
This statement was followed by a denial on the Twitter page of the EU Monitoring Mission, assuring that the shooting targeted none of their observers. And only after a video surfaced online of a masked EU observer recounting what happened did the EU monitoring mission delete its last tweet and post a new one saying their observers had witnessed the shooting.
Hovsep Khurshudyan, the Head of the “Free Citizen” NGO
“I guess they don’t want to stir things up, but at least their denial is more about the fact that their patrols weren’t targeted, which suggests that the shots were in the air rather than the patrol car.” Khurshudyan told Aravot.am. He noted that the shootings immediately followed the mission statement, which denied the misinformation spread by the Azerbaijanis that Armenia is concentrating a large amount of military equipment on the border. ”
Read also
Azerbaijani’s shootings were more of a message, a hidden threat that if you want to carry out your mission here in peaceful conditions, don’t make such revelations about our lies. That was the message,” Khurshudyan added.
And because the mission did not specify in its last tweet who fired the shots, our interlocutor urged us not to focus on that but on how the mission exposed the lie of Azerbaijan, stating that there are no accumulations on the RA border.
“I wonder how stubbornly you don’t want to see the much more important announcement made by that same mission that preceded this episode. And what preceded that was that the mission was monitoring here and did not see any accumulation of Armenian troops. This one is a thousand times more important than the fact that instead of saying, yes, the Azerbaijanis shot at us, they say that they did not target our patrols, but they do not deny that there were such shots.”
Arpine SIMONYAN
