MOSCOW (ArmRadio)—Armenian Defense Minister Vigen Sargsyan and his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu signed an agreement on establishing combined forces, a RIA Novosti reports.
Sargsyan said the group would include Russia’s military base in Armenia, as well as units of the Armenian armed forces. The ministers signed a cooperation plan for 2017.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off on a decree to establish a combined task force on November 14. Previously, Russia and Armenia signed the agreement that established regional Unified Air Defense System as part of Joint Commonwealth of Independent States Air Defense System in December 2015.
During his visit to Moscow, Sargsyan participated in the 71st regular sitting of the Council of Defense Ministers of CIS participating states in Moscow.
A number of documents regulating the cooperation between the Defense Ministries of the CIS participating states were discussed and key directions of joint work were outlined at the meeting.
Issues related to the joint air defense system, development of communication systems, humanitarian mine clearance, training of military personnel and joint field exercises, implementation of joint educational programs were discussed.
The news sounds encouraging, but, as it lacks some necessary specifics it might as well sound like a plot just adequate to discourage poor Armenia from slipping out of Russian Federation like Georgia, another words “God forbid” lest Armenia slip out of Putin’s pocket creating another headache for him though geopolitically less important than Ukraine.
Very cautiously we must start thinking that perhaps our Big Brother” himself is preparing to get rid of us by donating us partly to Turkey and partly to Azerbaijan as historically has done that oftenly, so generously by putting us to sleep with that kind of theatrical tactics,lest we make a scandal to awake his petrodollarly nouveau-rich new friends break away whom he has so hardly tamed recently. A.N.