On September 11, at Armenian Defense Ministry training ground “Marshal Baghramyan” took place the active phase of the strategic command and staff exercises “Shant-2015.” Head of Staff of the exercise is head of the RA President’s Administration Vigen Sargsyan.
They were involved infantry, mechanized infantry, tank, artillery units, air force.

In the 1990s there was a very serious situation in Armenia and Artsakh. Everywhere spontaneously volunteer corps were created, but their individual actions were not very effective. Young authorities decided to unite all these groups as part of a military unit, under one command. About 30 platoons were merged, Colonel Sergey Arakelyan was appointed commander. With some difficulty, but the authorities managed to obtain weapons and ammunition. In resolving these important questions a lot of work was done by the then Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Grigor Grigoryan.

The book of well-known English writer Noel Barber “Lords of the golden-horn” is a historical work and was published in 1973. The plot of the book includes the reign of Sultan Suleyman to the 1920s, up to Kemal Ataturk and contains information about the massacres of Armenians in 1894-96 during the period of Sultan Hamid, the Big Armenian Genocide. These materials, in author’s opinion, prove that the Armenian Genocide was premeditated and planned.
The book was recently translated into Armenian by Harutyun Yeghnazaryan from Iran and into the Persian – in 1985. The presentation of the Armenian translation took place on August 10, during the meeting of the Elders’ Union of Armenian cultural organization “Ararat” of Tehran. Sponsors of the book are Ani and Armen Manukyan.

Three soldiers are sitting in front of me. Are they brothers? They are completely different. Khoren, the Senior, has a peaceful look, eyes are honest, thinking. Hovik is the youngest, is a handsome guy with a mischievous twinkle in the eyes. Hayk is in between, with strong muscles, you feel a rebel in him. And he starts talking: “So we have come from Russia. We came to defend our homeland.”
The Mkrtchyan brothers grew up in the city Sarapul, Udmurtia, Russian Federation. Recently they have come to Armenia, and became the soldiers of mandatory military service.

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.

It is approved by the order of the RA Minister of Defense No. 9-Ն from 09.07.2015 “Expanded list of departmental information system of the RA Ministry of Defense, appropriate to classification.” The argument that it is prohibited by the order to the relatives of soldiers or members of civil society to receive information about fatalities in the armed forces is not true, and doesn’t correspond to the logic of the order.
The secret is not considered to be a particular case, but “Happened in the army emergencies, events and information, which identify their causes according to the degree of secrecy of information due to the change in the military-political and operational situation.”
Parents are also provided information during the investigation opened in connection with the incident of the criminal case.

Today Armenian armourers are preparing rockets, bombs, mortars, grenades and are arming the army. Armenia is preparing parts of all the weapons used in the army and due to them the military equipment is always safeguarded and that increases the life of the weapon. Through innovation Armenian armourers change specifications of weapons that surprises even Russians, i.e. weapons are upgraded and enhanced.