Hraparak daily of Armenia writes as follows, in particular: The authorities, especially in recent times, are often boasting that they are buying weapons, equipping the borders. Instead of defending the border with the previous “tin cans,” they are building concrete bunkers or, as the chairman of the NA’s [i.e. the National Assembly] defense committee Andranik Kocharyan likes to say, border strongholds.

Our sources in the Ministry of Defense report that an open tender is announced for the construction of these “strongholds,” in which it is described what parameters with which a building is to be constructed—that is, they make security-related confidential information accessible to our enemies as well. [But] this is not the only strange fact of this process.

Our source also says that the construction work of the “strongholds” is mainly carried out by foreigners—Indians, Egyptian citizens, Iranians—and naturally, the NSS [i.e. the National Security Service] does not check everyone’s identity, and there is no guarantee that, for example, some of them are not employees or informants of another country’s special services who, under the guise of cheap labor, pass confidential information to our adversaries.