Armenia is reforming the army: revanchists are worried

Innovations in the army, approved by the country's parliament in December, have come into force in Armenia. The term of military service has been reduced by six months. Against the background of a reduction in the military budget for 2026, this fact caused outrage in revanchist circles advocating preparations for a new war.

What is the government accused of? The politicization of the issue of army building, populism and an attempt on certain historical military traditions. The opposition claims that shortening the service life will inevitably weaken the country's defense capability, as well as lead to a personnel shortage in the armed forces. Particularly violent emotions followed in response to the statements made by the President of Azerbaijan in a recent interview regarding the weapons purchased by Baku and the growth of the defense industry. How is it, the revanchists scream, that Azerbaijan is "preparing for war", and Armenia is cutting the military budget, and even leaving the army without a reserve?!

Etc. Nothing original. The traditional set.

The opposition accuses the current government of destroying the army. But how can you destroy something that doesn't exist? The forces led by the "former" do not tire of boasting about their imaginary achievements in army construction, which in fact did not exist. Critics of Nikol Pashinyan's reforms do not want to see the difference between an army and a gang, between purchased and donated weapons. While there is a big difference between these concepts. In the days of Kocharyan and Sargsyan, Armenia received weapons as a gift from Russia, or on a loan that could not be repaid. Armenia's current allies are not willing to give her multibillion-dollar gifts. Hence the sharp rise in the level of external debt. After all, Armenia is a poor country that produces practically nothing, and it is not easy for it to compensate for the difference.

Yes, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is far from military affairs. But his predecessors also understood little about the construction of the army. The "exes" thought they were building an army, but in fact they were creating a group according to the traditional bandit-Dashnak scheme, led by the thugs "khmbapets", who were beautifully called "field commanders" during the First Karabakh War. All the years after the first war, the "victors" tried very hard to move from the philosophy of gangs to the philosophy of a regular disciplined army, but nothing worked. No offense, but the absence of those historical military traditions has made itself felt strongly. Plus, the country has long been led by warlords and war criminals. And, of course, the foundation is important. The Armenian army, like its predecessors, the bandit and bandit groups of the beginning of the last century, was originally created to capture someone else's property, not to defend its own.

Pashinyan, apparently, wants to change this philosophy. Earlier, he stated that the criminal situation in the Armenian army is a consequence of the lack of ideology. Without a clear ideology and a clear strategy, the army will turn the country and itself into chaos, the Armenian Prime minister believes. He stated that he was ready to attract qualified personnel from the citizen, but on the condition that they would share the ideology of the state. That is, the path is closed for "sparapets" and "khmbapets".

Meanwhile, useless arguments about who is to blame for the country's military defeat do not stop in Armenia. A couple of months ago, it was reported that the relevant parliamentary commission has completed an investigation into this issue. However, the results have not yet been made public, and Pashinyan's opponents are taking advantage of this to stir up discussions and try to prove that their stay in power would prevent the liberation of the occupied territories and the triumph of justice. These are very frivolous discussions, given that the revanchists have no chance of changing anything. They have no way to influence the new realities and win back the situation, and the time machine has not yet been invented to go back and see how it was. Although it is unlikely that our neighbors will see anything new that the Azerbaijani side did not know and did not talk about. Everything happened according to the logic of the evolutionary process, the transition from darkness to light and from the lowest to the highest.

The decision to shorten the length of service in the army has become another reason to attack the government. Revanchists cannot forget that Defense Minister Suren Papikyan called for focusing on reserve training, not running away from reality and recognizing that the reason for the defeat in the 44-day war was the lack of a trained reserve. The revanchist opposition, of course, disagreed with Papikyan. Opposition politicians and experts joined the Brownian movement. How was there no reserve? How was it that there was no combat training? - They were indignant. Experts from the opposition pool began vying to prove that the reserve has always been of the highest quality, which, they say, confirms the participation of reservists in the four-day war of 2016, "where they adequately fulfilled their tasks."

Meanwhile, it was the April 2016 battles of the year that for the first time revealed the whole truth about what the Armenian army is like when it remains one-on-one with the enemy, without Russian and other support, which solves all issues while the "zinvor" are engaged in massacre and robbery. At that time, there was no one to solve the issues for the army of "iron ashots", and they had to turn around on their own. And they found a way out - they just ran. The same reserve and the rest of the population of the occupied territories ran after the military. The Armenians rushed deep into the occupation zone, and many ran all the way to Armenia. Convinced of the victoriousness of their "invincible" army, many did not dare to return for several months after the end of the fighting.

In those days, a letter addressed by the separatist regime to Seyran Ohanyan appeared on social media. In it, the Armenian Defense Minister was informed that residents of Askeran, Agderin and Khojavend districts were leaving their homes and heading to Yerevan. They are trying to stop them, for which posts have been set up at the exit from the city of Askeran. The message also spoke about the decline in the morale of soldiers and the frequent cases of desertion. The established posts were set up not so much for civilians as for soldiers and officers fleeing from the battle zone. But it wasn't a real war yet.

The problem with the Armenian army is that it was created from people who underwent combat training not at the training grounds of the Armed Forces, but at the training grounds of the Yerkrapah terrorist union or VOMA, which trains bandits. The Karabakh clan was calm, knowing that the Armenian youth were in safe hands. This was how a reserve was created, which was zombified and prepared for armed robbery, motivated by myths and illusory goals. But it turned out that cave hatred was not enough to win. It is enough for dirty victories over civilians and robbery, but in a confrontation with the real army power, the Yerkrap and VOMA chicks turned out to be a complete zero. These soldiers were trained to capture someone else's property, not to defend their own. The war criminals who trained the reserve during the First Karabakh War had no idea what a real army was. That's why they ran in 2016 and deserted en masse in 2020.

The Armenian army has always been an army of deserters. It's not because Armenians are cowards. But because the motivation was not conducive to heroism. No one wanted to die for foreign lands. Therefore, thousands of Armenian soldiers refused to join the battle, and when they were in battle, they deserted, hid in basements, in forests, in the mountains, waiting for the end of the war. There was a case when a whole detachment was waiting for the war in the forest on the territory of Armenia. He was accidentally stumbled upon by local residents, to whom the military explained that... They got lost.

After the Second Karabakh War, prosecutors took up the cases of deserters. This was not done after the April fighting. At that time, Sargsyan and Ohanyan did not emphasize the fact of mass flight from the contact line (they could not understand the motives of the deserters), although the military personnel warned that this would become a bad precedent and would also affect the Armenian army. It turned out. And yet how.

In February 2021, it became known that over 10,000 cases of desertion had been opened in Armenia. This was reported by the Armenian media with reference to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's statement in parliament.

Now that the conflict has ended with the complete defeat of mythical theories, Nikol Pashinyan is trying to create a real Armenia and its army, which will be built only to protect its own borders and territories. At the security forum in Yerevan on Tuesday, the Prime Minister explained why Armenia could not acquire serious weapons in previous years. She tried, but they refused and said: "we refuse to sell you weapons because we are not sure that these weapons will be deployed within the internationally recognized borders of Armenia, moreover, we have doubts that these funds can be used outside your internationally recognized borders." I think this is the main reason why Russia has always been the only supplier of weapons to Armenia. But she wasn't bothered by the moral side of the issue. But even she did not dare to transfer such a force as Iskander to Yerevan.

Kocharyan and Sargsyan would never have told the Armenians about the true causes of the problems with arming the army, because the Armenians should not have known that the world does not recognize the results of the First Karabakh War.

We don't sign up to be Pashinyan's lawyer. We are talking about all this based on our own interests.Armenia's preservation of the previous line of army building based on the doctrine of aggression and territorial seizure will mean a constantly smoldering threat of war. Azerbaijan cannot arrange this in any way, and we hope, and with good reason, that the current leadership of the country will be able to break this destructive tradition.

The Azerbaijani army was created only to defend the country's borders and protect its security. The Azerbaijani armed forces have never set foot on foreign soil, the war was fought only within our borders. The positions that Azerbaijani soldiers occupy today on the conditional border belong to Azerbaijan, no matter what the Armenian agitprop fantasizes there. Meanwhile, the military personnel of the Armenian Armed Forces have been on Azerbaijani territory for a quarter of a century, illegally serving there, including conscription. Pashinyan tried to prohibit the sending of conscripts to the occupied lands and the rotation of personnel of the local units of the Republic of Armenia. And this is exactly what the revanchists are beating him with today, accusing him of reducing the combat capability of the separatists.

Considering all this, it is important for us that the previous Sargsyan and Ohanian programs of fostering harmful Armenian patriotism in its traditional sense be curtailed in Armenia. That's what Nikol Pashinyan is going to do. If he's not interrupted.