YEREVAN. – The Armenian helicopter’s downing by Azerbaijan had the objective of demoralizing the Armenian army.

Karabakh War veteran Jirair Sefilian, who is also a member of Armenia’s opposition Pre-Parliament initiative, stated the aforesaid at a press conference on Wednesday.

“It’s hard that the dead bodies of our pilots were in the open air for approximately ten days. [But] I believe this fact is not accidental either; the task at hand [for the Azerbaijani side] was to demoralize our army.

“Fortunately, our [army] was able to, with its might, that is, us Armenians, with our might, were able to save our honor,” Sefilian said.

In his words, the Armenian army is the sole establishment today which can keep Armenia away from the loss of sovereignty, and this is why the army is the target of Azerbaijan.

“Our army can stop this wheel which leads us to the precipice, and it [also] has the ability to put our country into the course of development in a short time. This is why our army is under attack today,” the Karabakh War veteran stressed.

The Azerbaijani armed forces violated the ceasefire and shot down a Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) Air Force helicopter on November 12. The chopper was downed during a training flight, and it crashed very close to the Karabakh-Azerbaijan Line of Contact. As a result, three pilots were killed: the commander of the helicopter, Major Sergey Sahakyan, as well as Senior Lieutenant Sargis Nazaryan and Lieutenant Azat Sahakyan.

The adversary, on the other hand, was firing intensive shots toward the crash site, thus, not allowing access to the area.

But the remains of these three military servicemen plus some necessary parts of the chopper were retrieved from the helicopter’s crash site through a special operation by the NKR armed forces. As a result, the Azerbaijanis suffered serious casualties, whereas the Armenian side sustained none.