YEREVAN. – Armenians punish the adversary at the battlefield, and they do not have an adopted approach whereby they kill people during international courses, while asleep, or at dark corners, Armenian Defense Minister’s Press Secretary Artsrun Hovhannisyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am, in response to the query as to whether there will be a punishment, a vengeance against Ramil Safarov.       

“We have a precise military code of conduct: nobility, [and] chivalry, which assumes defeating the adversary at the battlefield [and] in a just battle. But now, and in many cases, taking vengeance upon Safarov is in Azerbaijan’s interest because Azerbaijan, finding itself under serious international pressure, would very much want for such thing to happen so that a sign of equality can be marked between us and them,” Artsrun Hovhannisyan stated.      

Also, he considered a resumption of military actions to be highly unlikely, and noted that although the adversary violates the ceasefire on a regular basis, it is improbable to expect anything new.  

Armenian News-NEWS.am reported earlier that Ramil Safarov, a lieutenant in the Azerbaijani military, was extradited on August 31 from Hungary, where he was serving a life sentence—and with no expression of either regret or remorse—for the premeditated axe murder of Armenian lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan, in his sleep, during a NATO Partnership for Peace program in Budapest back in 2004.

As expected, Ramil Safarov’s return to Baku was welcomed, as was his act of murder, by the officials of president Ilham Aliyev’s government and much of Azerbaijani society, and the Azerbaijani president immediately granted him a pardon.

And Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan announced on August 31 that Armenia is suspending its diplomatic ties with Hungary.