The army can’t participate in political processes since that has already been ruled out. This is what Armenia’s Deputy Minister of Defense Gabriel Balayan said when the Standing Committee on Defense and Security of the National Assembly was discussing the report on the implementation and achieved outcomes of reforms.

Balayan particularly stated that, with this, the leaderships of the Ministry of Defense and the command of the Armed Forces wish to show their will to keep the army away from political processes.

This led to a heated dispute between him and Chairman of the Standing Committee on Defense and Security Affairs of the National Assembly, MP of the My Step faction Andranik Kocharyan. During the dispute, Balayan and Kocharyan touched upon the events that took place on 1-2 March 2008 and the events that took place in the spring of 2018.