Defence Ministry official on Levon Ter-Petrosyan's statement
In his interview with ilur.am, Armenia’s first President Levon Ter-Petrosyan refrained from commenting on the current situation around Nagorno-Karabakh, saying he did not possess full information. At the same time he described Armenia’s response to Azeri ceasefire violations as “restrained and inadequate.” “The assessment that Armenia’s response to Azeri provocations is restrained and inadequate has cause ambiguity. If we take into consideration the fact that Armenian forces do not respond to irregular firing of the Azerbaijani side and only respond to targeted shooting, which has been regularly said by the Armenian Defence Minister, as well as the fact that Armenia never aggravates the situation, we can consider Armenia’s response restrained,” Artsrun Hovhannisyan, Spokesman for the Armenian Defence Ministry, wrote on his Facebook. Regarding ‘the inadequate response’ of the Armenian side, the MoD official says the assessment is inadmissible and even the monitoring of the official news can show the picture of real losses of the conflicting parties. “Any war situation is a dilemma for the military command and in our case it has lasted since 1994,” he wrote. “It was thanks to our efforts and ingenuity that we have been able to effectively restrain the ambitions of the Azerbaijani side and maintain the equilibrium of forces,” Artsrun Hovhannisyan.
