Armenian leadership sends soldiers from poor families to Karabakh
As Yerevan tries to hide the facts about the April clashes of last year, more horrific information pops-up in the country revealing the true state of Armenia’s army.
As Yerevan tries to hide the facts about the April clashes of last year, more horrific information pops-up in the country revealing the true state of Armenia’s army.
The Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor office (HCAV) has recently revealed that Armenia’s casualties during the escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in April 2016 were not only caused directly by warfare but also by low-quality fuel, equipment malfunctions, and insufficient ammunition in the Armenian army.
The study by the HCAV indicated that the loss of the Armenian side could be lesser if it weren’t for a shortage of ammunition, malfunctioning weapons and equipment, as well as corruption and low-quality management in the field of defense.
Head of the HCAV Artur Sakun has announced that the list of Armenian soldiers, who died in the April clashes didn’t include all of the dead – there were people whose names weren’t stated in the list.
Sakunts also criticized the low level of medical care in the Armenian army, which was obvious during the April fights.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced that roughly 320 Armenian soldiers were killed and more than 500 servicemen of the enemy were wounded during the clashes caused by Armenia’s provations. However, the Armenian side claimed that the figure is only 168 and hided the real figures.
Sakunts further reminded that there were no sons of the Armenian officials, influential people or oligarchs among the dead soldiers, pointing to the fact that only poor Armenians die in the occupied territories. Armenian political analyst Manvel Sargsyan, commenting on the issue, stated that the April events showed that the Armenian society is divided into castes.
“One caste is engaged in the misappropriation of national wealth, and at the same time it makes everyone else go to war,” he noted.
Besides the battle casualties, dozens of Armenian soldiers lose their lives in non-combat conditions in the Armenian army.
Recently, mothers of these soldiers once again gathered for a protest in front of the Presidential Palace in Yerevan. They demanded a fair investigation for the deaths of their sons.
One of the mothers, Irina Ghazaryan, told reporters that although seven years have passed since her son died, no one was punished for killing him. Moreover, her son’s killers received medals from the Armenian president for the participation in the April fighting.
“Today my son would’ve turned 26. He celebrated his 18th birthday, and this bully [the President Serzh Sargsyan] sent him to Karabakh and then awarded the murderer of my son Martin Jangiryan for the fourday war in April,” she complained to reporters.
There are dozens of stories of mysterious deaths in the Armenian army, most of which are being registered by Armenian investigation bodies as suicides in order to hide the real circumstances and real murderers. Therefore, Armenian mothers are afraid to send their sons to serve in the army, which provides terrible conditions for soldiers. However, they are powerless against the government. Thus, more and more soldiers die in the Armenian army, and most of them are from poor families.