Today, at the session of the NA Investigative Committee, Andranik Kocharyan, Chairman of the NA Standing Committee on Defense and Security Affairs, reminded Nikol Pashinyan of the statement he made on January 26, 2019, during the closed session of the Ministry of Defense, “With this format of the negotiation process, they lead us to war; they demand concessions for nothing, and they put us on the conveyor belt of war. We cannot make concessions for anything. But to have the opportunity not to make meaningless concessions, our strength is the army.”
Kocharyan also reminded that on that day, Nikol Pashinyan asked the army’s leadership a straightforward question. Do we have that reserve of strength so as not to make meaningless concessions? According to Kocharyan, the head of the Armed Forces General Staff of that time, Artak Davtyan, gave a standard answer that the armed forces were ready to fulfill the combat tasks. Kocharyan asked the Prime Minister of Armenia to comment on how true this is.
“I tried to understand what we can do at the functional level from the armed forces general staff chiefs. Roughly speaking, can we keep it or not? I have never heard an answer that is no. They said it would not be easy, but we will keep it. It was also reported to the Security Council in writing,” said Nikol Pashinyan, adding, “I, including August 2020, received an assurance that it will be tough. Still, the Armed Forces, the Defense Army will fulfill the task set before them.”
Nikol Pashinyan also spoke about the army’s weapons, “There is a lot of talk about the fact that after I became the prime minister, the plans for acquiring weapons and military equipment were changed and distorted. nothing has changed, just additional, different techniques have been acquired.” Pashinyan emphasized that no one can remember a case when the army presented a problem to the government, and that problem still needed to be solved because there was no money. “But I also want us to understand that the solution to many problems is not only money-related.”
