Armenian troops forced to retaliate on contact line with Azerbaijan: minister

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenian armed forces and Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) defense army are compelled to retaliate against Azerbaijan’s ceasefire violations to show the impossibility of a military solution to the conflict, defense minister Vigen Sargsyan said on Saturday, March 11.

“Armenia has been involved in the process of ensuring the Artsakh people’s security for around 29 years now,” Sargsyan said at a session of Valdai Discussion Club in Yerevan.

“Taking the threat to the physical existence of Artsakh people in account, Armenia has become the absolute guarantor of Karabakh people's security."

“Despite the different amounts of weapons left in countries following the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as major differences in demographic indicators, the people of Karabakh managed to establish a well-functioning system of state power,” Sargsyan added, Panorama.am says.

According to the minister, preservation of the ceasefire agreement of 1994 is the bedrock of the Armenian side’s actions on the contact line.

“The agreement, unfortunately, is regularly violated by Azerbaijan with subversive attacks and the use of artillery,” he said.

The Armenian armed forces and Karabakh army are forced to retaliate, Sargsyan said, “in order to cool hotheads off and rule out a military solution to this conflict.”

30 ceasefire violations by the Azerbaijani army were registered on the contact line with Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) on March 10 and the following night. Azeri forces, in particular, used various caliber firearms to fire more than 100 shots. Also, Azerbaijani units employed a grenade launcher and an 82-mm mortar in the east and north of the frontline.