“Some mass media associate President Serzh Sargsyan’s meeting with servicemen with Armenia’s preparations to war. But the thing is not that.Probably, if not for the concerns, it would have been possible to hold a meeting in such a format after the holidays. It seems that the state is not too good. Exchange of views with servicemen was needed to curb the army and overcome problems in this sphere,” said Eldar Sabiroghlu, spokesman for Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry.
He said there is a crisis in the armed forces of Armenia and it is not the first year that this crisis is worsening.
The state measures are not effective because there are such delicate issues which are difficult and sometimes problematic to overcome by bureaucratic means. Today, the relations between local and Karabakh Armenians have become disastrous in Armenia. The history of this issue goes into a remote past. Karabakh Armenians were almost not appointed to the state positions when Armenia was headed by Karen Demirchyan.
The leadership of the Defense Ministry, a greater part of chiefs of departments are Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh. The same can be applied to most commanders of the military unit. This tendency is obviously demonstrated towards soldiers. Parents in Armenia spend all that they have for their children not to serve in Nagorno Karabakh. The attitude to alien soldiers is too bad there. Most of the recently captured Armenian soldiers are from Armenia and they admit that they surrendered voluntarily as they could not bear violence, discrimination and inhuman treatment. This is a brief picture," he said.
Sabiroghlu also added that Armenia is facing a demographic disaster.
"The country is currently facing serious problems in the sphere of military conscription. The Defense Ministry failed to form several military units on the front line due to the lack of human resources. Tensions grew in the result of army confrontation with the population on 1 March of 2009 when some 30 civilians were killed and hundreds of protests participants were wounded. For these and other reasons the hatred to army among the Armenian people has grown.
