YEREVAN. – A service investigation is launched with respect to the Armenian helicopter’s shoot-down by Azerbaijan, and this investigation will give all the answers to the questions.

Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) Defense Minister Movses Hakobyan, who is also Commander of the NKR Defense Army, told about the aforesaid to reporters on Tuesday. He stated this in response to a query on why the downed chopper was flying close to the Karabakh-Azerbaijan Line of Contact.

Reflecting on official Baku’s statement that the Nagorno-Karabakh airspace is a no-fly zone, Hakobyan noted: “Another state cannot restrict flights in the airspaces of a neighboring state. The flights are always conducted.”

To a journalist’s question on whether he sees a problem in the OSCE Minsk Group’s most recent statement, where the term “neutral zone” was replaced by the term “no man’s land,” the NKR defense minister responded: “Neutral zone and no man’s land express the same idea.”

He added that this incident will not to weaken the fighting spirit of the Armenian army.

“Such measures are not alien to the army. The army is created to war; this is an episode of the war,” the minister noted.

In conclusion, Movses Hakobyan stated that the combat-readiness of the Armenian army is such that it can counter any action by the adversary.

The Azerbaijani armed forces violated the ceasefire and shot down an 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 Nagorno-Karabakh Republic armed forces. As a result, the Azerbaijanis suffered serious casualties, whereas the Armenian side sustained none.