“We strongly condemn Azerbaijan’s bellicose, provocative actions, which undermine the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, whose manifestation was also this crime: the destruction of the Armenian helicopter and the tragic death of our pilots.”

The Catholicos of All Armenians, Karekin II, specifically stated the aforementioned while presiding over Monday’s memorial service for the killed crew members of the chopper which Azerbaijan had shot down.

On Tuesday, the crewmen’s remains will be transferred from the church to Yerablur Military Pantheon in capital city Yerevan, where they will be buried with a military ceremony.

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