RA AF, NKR AOD FULLY PERFORM THEIR TASKS

RA Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan on Augast 6 met with republican mass media representatives in the administrative complex of RA MoD.
Some excerpts from the meeting.

-Mir. Minister, is the stabilization of the situation expected after the meeting of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Sochi on August 8-9?

-One of the main reasons of such a tensed situation is that Azerbaijan authorities usually before such political functions, meetings, during them or after create tension trying to influence the international community and our society, to raise the combat spirit of its sub-units. After the Sochi meeting to expect a complete peace, full ceasefire seems to me unlikely. That’s why the RA armed forces after this meeting also permanently must be on their positions, especially the NKR Army of Defense all the time should raise its combat capability, vigilance.

-These days the warriors-liberators expressed their wish to go to the border.

-Warriors-liberators are our combat comrades and today form part of the mobilization resource of RA Armed Forces. When confronting the aggression they will be together with us to defend our homeland. But today there is no need for that, since RA AF, NKR AoD fully perform their tasks.

-What do you think, should a specific statement be by the Collective Security Treaty Organization, directed to the responsible party of the situation?

-I think today it is not the situation to address CSTO for support. A said many times that we can address CSTO only in case when large-scale combat actions start and we feel danger in the sense of ensuring Armenia’s security.

-Please tell about the number of losses.

-These days our sub-units prevented more than 20 acts of sabotage of the enemy, as a result Armenian side had 6 losses, the enemy – 8-9 times more.

-What is our opinion on the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the zone of the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict?

-Among the world conflicts Nagorny Karabakh is the only place where relative truce is retained without third party. We can solve your own problems put before us, and today there is no need for deployment of peacekeeping forces.

-Is it possible that Azerbaijan would go to full-scale war?

-Analysis of today’s military-political situation shows that incidents could grow into small, local collisions, but the likelihood of large-scale war, in my opinion, is the lowest.

Prepared by Shoushan Stepanyan