Babayan: Stepanakert has never pinned hopes on CSTO in ensuring its own security

There are flaws in all military actions, NKR President's Spokesman David Babayan has told ArmInfo, when commenting on the second president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan's statement that the April war demonstrated the flaws in modernization of the Armenian armed forces.   

"It is no secret that since the early 1990s Azerbaijan has been actively arming its forces. The flaws have recently been much spoken about, but I do not want to politicize this issue. There are flaws in all military actions. There were flaws during the First World War and during the Second World War. There were also some shortcomings in the arming and training of the Soviet troops. We saw the Azerbaijani flaws during the April war - their blitzkrieg failed and the Azerbaijani military doctrine prove to a complete failure," Babayan says.

At the same time, he notes that the Armenian side thoroughly analyzes the events and makes the appropriate conclusions, liquidating the shortcomings and flaws. Babayan also says that Stepanakert has never pinned hopes on the CSTO or Russia in ensuring its own security for the simple reason that it is not a member of the organization. "The most important thing is that the 'four-day war" has not developed into large-scale Karabakh-Azerbaijani-Armenian military actions, which would be fraught with unpredictable consequences. No doubt, in that case Russia and Turkey - the elder brother of Azerbaijan - would be involved in these processes. This might mark the beginning of the World War III or a large-scale regional war," he says. 

To note, in an interview with 2rd.am, Robert Kocharyan criticizes the domestic and military policy of the incumbent authorities. He stresses that Yerevan should have managed to stop the implementation of the Russian-Azerbaijani arms supply contract or it should have at least limited the range of the arms items or synchronized it with similar supplies to Armenia. "I do not know how effectively the authorities tried to do it and why they failed to prevent it, therefore I would refrain from assessments. At the same time, we proved to be unprepared in terms of military equipment, the purchase of which needed no intergovernmental agreements. For over two years the adversary's army caused a lot of trouble at nights, because it was equipped with all necessary devices," he says, adding that the Armenian side should have equipped the army with sufficient night vision devices and other necessary equipment. He stresses the need to immediately fill all the gaps and it is clear that measures are already being taken to that end. But this should be done at the institutional level, he says, noting that volunteers should not go to the front spontaneously but they should be sent to the military units with due regard for their military specialties. 

As regards Armenia's CSTO membership, Kocharyan says that the actions of some CSTO member states are incompatible with Armenia's CSTO membership. "It is obvious that we will not change the interests of these countries, but we should make serious conclusions. It is necessary to correctly understand what the CSTO is and we should have no overestimated expectations from it," says Kocharyan, adding that the CSTO is an asymmetric structure, whose core is the military and political interests of Russia. He says that this organization has no integrated common interest.  "Where are our common political and military interests with Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan, for instance? It would be naive to think that a joint CSTO membership can prevail over the current relations of Kazakhstan with Turkey and Azerbaijan. Therefore, the CSTO should be viewed in the context of the military-political and military-technical cooperation with Russia. That is the reality, and we cannot leave it," he says.