Azerbaijani army from the point of view of the Russian military-political analyst Alexander Khramchikhin. Comments by military historian Mnatsakan Khachatryan.

Candidate of Philology Sciences, Armenologist Haykazun Alvrtsyan founded and is the director of the Research Center for Studies of Western Armenians’ problems.

The main purpose of the visit was – acquaintance with the military-industrial complex of the Republic of Armenia and to find new opportunities for cooperation. In the delegation there were also Chairman of the Business Council under the Chairman of the Interstate Commission for Military and Economic Cooperation of CSTO member states Alexander Nozdrachyov and Assistant Chairman of the Board of the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation Alexander Pavlichenko. The delegation got acquainted with a number of military-industrial enterprises of Armenia.

The terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13 opened a new chapter in international relations. After 111 years preconditions have created for the revival of such a powerful military-political union, what was the Entente. At the same time the situation in the Middle East could lead to a major review of the results of the First World War.

From September 30 to October 4 in the RA MoD “Marshal Baghramyan” training grounds peacekeeping exercise “Indestructible Brotherhood-2015” was conducted. The subject was: “Preparation and conduct of peacekeeping operations by CSTO collective peacekeeping forces in the Caucasus region of the collective security.”
The joint exercises and the operations executed by the CSTO Collective Peacekeeping Forces held during the “Indestructible Brotherhood-2015” military exercise were supervised by the CSTO Secretary-General Nikolai Bordyuzha, the Chief of AF GS, Colonel-General Youri Khachaturov, representatives of the CSTO United Headquarters, CSTO Secretariat, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and representative of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations Denis Tikhomirov, on October 3.

The purpose of the strategy of the Azerbaijani military and political leadership is to push down the morale and material resources of the Armenian side. But after a while it became clear that even the use of firearms of large caliber is ineffective. Last summer, the Azerbaijani side had drastically changed tactics, sending to the state border of the NKR special forces with professional contract soldiers and with their help undertook sabotage and scouting actions that led some experts to argue that the Karabakh conflict has entered a new stage – the stage of diversionary war.

International treaties on arms control, in particular in the framework of the OSCE, whose members are both Armenia and Azerbaijan, provide mechanisms to control the exercises. The Vienna Document of 2011 specifies that state-parties must inform all other state-members on any one exercise involving up to 9,000 people, 250 battle tanks or 250 mortars and rocket-propelled missile systems. Moreover, if the exercises of this level were not included in the plan of the previous year, the carrying out of them need to be informed at least 42 days before the start.