National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia

04/14/2023 | News release | Archived content

Andranik Kocharyan: If adversary attacks, then should know that he will get hit

The RA Armed Forces retaliated, of course we had casualties. I don't want to be consoled by the fact that their casualties were more than ours. If we did not have such posture of the Armed Forces, the Azerbaijani armed forces would have penetrated much deeper and would have been deployed there. In the future, we should be based on the fact that the capabilities and strength of the Armed Forces must be at the level that to solve the problem they are facing. What's ours is ours. If the adversary is going to attack, he should know that he will get hit. The Armed Forces must implement their task even without assignments. The Chair of the NA Standing Committee on Defense and Security Andranik Kocharyan said this during the briefings following the NA sittings, responding to the journalist's question that the opposition believes the incidents that happened near Tegh village were a drawback by the Government.

The Secretary of the Civil Contract Faction Artur Hovhannisyan added that when the opposition blames the political authorities for the incident that happened in Tegh community during yesterday's closed meeting, it was obvious to the opposition how the incidents happened. It is clearly another provocation of Azerbaijan against the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia.

The journalist also inquired when the Prime Minister gave the assignments, which he spoke about during the NA-Government Q&A session, and why those assignments were not implemented.

According to Andranik Kocharyan, the Prime Minister's assignments cannot be unfulfilled, they can simply fail to fulfill them. "Of course, there are drawbacks, we are pursuing that these drawbacks are revealed. Assignments are provided where situations are discussed. They can be given at the sittings of the Security Council", Andranik Kocharyan explained and noted that the assignments were given before the advance of the Azerbaijani armed forces.

Touching upon the closed meeting held the previous day in the National Assembly at the initiative of the opposition with the participation of the General Staff of the RA Armed Forces, the deputy said that the discussion was aimed at excluding such situations, not looking for culprits. According to him, there will definitely be official investigations regarding the incidents that happened near Tegh village.

There will definitely be a service investigation in the National Security Service, if necessary, in the Armed Forces as well.

The journalist inquired about the statement made by the Prime Minister the previous day that Armenia is ready to withdraw troops along the entire border line of the Armenia-Azerbaijan maps of 1991, in response to which the spokesperson of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry stated that Nikol Pashinyan should clarify what he meant by saying that.

"It's so obvious, they have the answer as well. And that answer is the registered section of our state border, and there is no problem there. What Nikol Pashinyan means, it is not the first time it has been voiced to make a mirror movement of the army, which has remained unanswered," Andranik Kocharyan stated, adding that Armenia is moving according to the maps of the USSR in its hands, the military part of which is confirmed by the General Staff.

There was a reference to the official representative of the RF Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova's statement in which Russia asked Armenia for an explanation regarding the participation in the joint military exercises with the NATO, in response to which the Secretary of the Civil Contract Faction Artur Hovhannisyan said that Armenia is moving forward with the RA state interests and is doing everything in the direction of increasing the combat capability of its Armed Forces and will continue to do so. "Armenia continues its warm, friendly, strategic relations with its strategic partner Russia, it also continues its warm relations with our partners from other countries and does everything for the benefit of the development of the RA Armed Forces and the increase of combat capabilities," the Faction Secretary said.