Appointments in the Armed Forces of Armenia were not based on professional qualities or knowledge, but on loyalty. Second President Robert Kocharyan, who heads the “Armenia” bloc ahead of the snap parliamentary elections on June 20, stated this on Monday.

"These latest appointments [in the army] are simply astonishing. Either it is a question of not knowing the issue at all, or a continuation of the process of conscious destruction of the army. Which of the two? Or maybe both together," Kocharyan added.

According to him, the “remote control” of these people is somewhere else. "If they had thought about the combat-readiness of the country and the army, they would not have made such steps and appointments."

The second President noted that the most dangerous cuts in the Armenian army were made before the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) war, during the last year. "They cut down on the military units, which can accept mobilization resources and become a very combat-ready military unit very quickly. But during the war they had no place to take the mobilization resource. It was necessary to create a military unit from scratch, which would immediately appear on the battlefield; this is also the reason for our so many casualties. It is necessary to understand why they did it. Was it the lack of knowledge? Or the deliberate destruction of the army?" Robert Kocharyan concluded.