Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan reflected on the Armenian army at Tuesday’s meeting of the National Assembly Inquiry Committee for Studying the Circumstances of the Hostilities Unleashed on September 27, 2020.
"As a matter of fact, the following was done in relation to the army: Were there any discussions about the state of combat readiness? Yes, there were. And I received assurances up to and including August 2020 that, of course, it will be very difficult, the army will fulfill the task set before it. This is not a record that has just been taken into account. In 2018, I adopted the ‘everything for the army’ policy," Pashinyan said.
"Already in 2019, salaries in the army have increased significantly, purchase of weapons and military equipment have been carried out. There is a lot of talk that after I became the prime minister, the plans for the acquisition of weapons and military equipment were changed, distorted. Nothing has changed; just additional other [military] equipment have been acquired," the Armenian PM noted.
"It is ruled out that anyone remembers a case when the [Armenian] army submitted a task to the government and it was not fulfilled because there is no money. But solving many problems is not only related to money," Pashinyan said.
Also, he announced that after he became Armenia's prime minister, a question of changing the vector of the country’s foreign policy was not discussed.
"On the contrary, our perception was that such a change could have serious consequences in the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict itself," Nikol Pashinyan added.
