Deputy Defense Minister Hrachya Sargsyan does not know whether the amount being allocated to the Ministry of Defense (MoD) of Armenia will decrease in the 2026 state budget.

"We will continue to carry out next year the same amount of work that we are carrying out this year. We are implementing what we have approved and planned in the medium-term programs; we will implement those same expenses,” Sargsyan told reporters.

“The [2026 state] budget [of Armenia] will be approved by the National Assembly in December. I believe that when it is approved, it will be clearer. But the approach is that what we have approved with the medium-term spending plan, that same amount will be next year,” he noted.

“If your question is that our ministry of defense will not acquire various means to carry out its functions, or will start acquiring less, I assure you that the MoD will work with the same logic that it has worked in 2024, 25, also in 2026,” Sargsyan said.

To the reporters’ remark that Azerbaijan is intensively arming itself, while Armenia is not increasing its MoD spending, Sargsyan said that Azerbaijan’s military budget has been several times higher than Armenia’s state budget over the past 30 years.

“If your question is that we [i.e. Armenia] increase our entire state budget in such a way that we reach Azerbaijan’s military budget, it will not happen,” the noted deputy minister of defense of Armenia.