YEREVAN (RFE/RL)—Armenia will hold this October what its Defense Ministry described on Thursday as unprecedented military exercises involving thousands of troops and army reservists.
The ministry also announced that more Armenian army fortifications along the border with Azerbaijan have been beefed up in recent months.
“It will be a big exercise,” the ministry spokesman, Artsrun Hovannisian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). “It will be unprecedented in the sense that we have not had [war games] of that scale before.”
Hovannisian said the one-week drills will be marked by “quite a large participation” of reservists. Scores of them, including young Armenians demobilized from the armed forces recently and even men aged 50 or over, will be called up for that purpose, he said.
“In recent years the participation of reservists has steadily increased,” explained the official. “We are in a situation where our reservists must always be actively engaged in military training.”
The Armenian military already announced in April 2011 that the training of its reserve personnel will be more regular and intensive from now on. Thousands of reservists have spent up to a week in military camps since then.
Hovannisian stressed that the upcoming exercises were planned in advance and are not directly related to the tense situation on Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan and “the line of contact” around Nagorno-Karabakh highlighting the growing risk of another Armenian-Azerbaijani war. “There is no need to panic and make unnecessary speculations,” he said.
The Armenian military made similar statements in late June when it held, jointly with other state bodies, command-and-staff exercises that simulated their coordinated response to the outbreak of a full-scale war, including a general mobilization.
The Karabakh Armenian military held three-day exercises earlier this month. It said the drills demonstrated the “adequate preparedness” of its forces for a possible war with Azerbaijan.
A statement by the Defense Ministry said Ohanian toured army posts in southern Armenia bordering Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave for the same purpose on Tuesday and Wednesday. It said he examined new defense fortifications built there.
Ohanian was quoted as noting “positive trends” in the army ranks, including a stronger “physical and spiritual protection of soldiers.” The minister also spoke of “remarkable achievements” in the fight against army crime which the military command appears to have toughened since 2010.
NK wasn’t allowed to finish the job and remove the eastern Turkish threat permanently. I guess both the US and Russia saw a benefit to this. So then why “cease fire” and not “peace treaty”? That either means that “someone” left the door open for a future war, and in fact maybe even guaranteed it.
This is very good news indeed and the MoD needs to continue and build upon these initiatives.
God Bless
Long live Armenia, God bless them all.
As an Iranian, I think that Iran and Armenia should do a peace-support joint military drill to address the common threat namely warmongering Aliev of Baku and his foolish dreams. We stand by Armenia. Armenia’s destiny is our destiny.
we armenians stand by your side to against the zionist regime even here in america..there propaganda no longer works…we are by your side. no more wars for oil and regional domination of israel against the muslim population of the middle east. they can try to get the shia and the sunni to kill eachother as hard as they want..eventually those guns are gonna turn around back at ishrahell…the day of reckoning is near…
Yes Ali, Turkic tribes are very much involved with theological dream of Pan Turkisim..this dream is included, real “Azerbaijan” of Iran, those people whose last names finished with OF or EV are by-products, Where they call famous Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi as a Turk, who wrote only in Persian… even their own brainwashed bi-polar fake leader does not have real Azeri last name!!
Ali, We stand by Iran! Armenians had peace with Persians for over 1600 years. There is no need to demonstrate to the public, but every Armenian in Iran and outside Iran has always been grateful to our Iranian friends.
I think the greatest idea for Armenia would be to buy a Greek Island to house a military base for second strike capability. The concept behind second strike capacity is if Azerbajian were to have the luck of catching Armenia off guard and damage alot of it’s military capacity, a second strike capacity would allow military forces that are away from the mainland to strike at Azerbajian.It could also serve as a offshore site for factories.
There are many uninhabited Greek Islands for sale such as Omfori Island and since our poor Greek brothers are in such as mess thanks to the tricks of Goldman-Sachs, selling an uninhabited island. It may be hard to believe but there is a company with a website that is selling Greek Islands.http://www.privateislandsonline.com/areas/greece
http://www.guardian.co.uk › News › World news › Greece
Armenia needs to promote regional peace and stability. It would be a very wise idea for Russia to make Iran a member of the CSTO security alliance. This would do a tremendous amount of good to difuse this very hot situation with Iran and the West. It seems that if Iran feels protected, it will be less likely to feel the need to challenge the West. We need regional stability and peace in this world. Fix the global economy instead of creating unnecessary war and bloodshed.
If the Armenian oligarchs are true patriots, they should donate money to the Armenian government to purchase better tanks and weapons systems.