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ARMENIA ANNOUNCED AN INCREASE IN ITS ARMS ACQUISITIONS
Armenia announced a dramatic increase in arms acquisitions in recent
years, saying they intended to offset the continued massive military
buildup of Azerbaijan.
"Over the past three years, we have acquired as many weapons as we
did in the previous 20 years," said Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan
during a visit to a military unit in Nagorno Karabakh.
"In this sense, rest assured that we will never allow the military
balance is disturbed. We will maintain this balance, "he said to the
soldiers in the Armenian government website.
Tigran Sargsyan gave few details of these acquisitions. He said, in
an apparent reference to Russia, "strategic partners" help Armenia
to remain in the arms race with Azerbaijan's oil-rich part of the
Organization of the Collective Security Treaty.
There were other indications of deliveries of Russian weapons to
Armenia, mostly made free, which would be intensified lately. Armenian
parliamentary pro-government claimed in May that no less than 120
Russian planes carrying weapons to Armenia during the last year alone.
The commander of the Karabakh Armenian army, General Movses Hakobyan,
has even talked about large-scale acquisitions of weapons at the
end of July. Movses Hakobyan said that arms shipments were so large
that the Karabakh army is struggling to save the new weapons and the
construction of a new deposit for this purpose.
In particular, the Karabakh Armenians are known to have created a new
tank brigade last year. Some defense analysts in Yerevan believe it
is armed with about 100 tanks.
Azerbaijan had begun to receive in June a similar number of tanks and
many other offensive weapons made in Russia with an estimated value of
$ 1 billion. President Ilham Aliyev said last month that "the volume
of military-technical cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan is
estimated at $ 4 billion and it tends to increase." According to the
Moscow newspaper "Vedomosti", the figure cited by Aliyev is "the sum
of all contracts and partly executed since 2010."
Saturday, September 7, 2013, Stephane © armenews.com
From: A. Papazian
Armenia announced a dramatic increase in arms acquisitions in recent
years, saying they intended to offset the continued massive military
buildup of Azerbaijan.
"Over the past three years, we have acquired as many weapons as we
did in the previous 20 years," said Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan
during a visit to a military unit in Nagorno Karabakh.
"In this sense, rest assured that we will never allow the military
balance is disturbed. We will maintain this balance, "he said to the
soldiers in the Armenian government website.
Tigran Sargsyan gave few details of these acquisitions. He said, in
an apparent reference to Russia, "strategic partners" help Armenia
to remain in the arms race with Azerbaijan's oil-rich part of the
Organization of the Collective Security Treaty.
There were other indications of deliveries of Russian weapons to
Armenia, mostly made free, which would be intensified lately. Armenian
parliamentary pro-government claimed in May that no less than 120
Russian planes carrying weapons to Armenia during the last year alone.
The commander of the Karabakh Armenian army, General Movses Hakobyan,
has even talked about large-scale acquisitions of weapons at the
end of July. Movses Hakobyan said that arms shipments were so large
that the Karabakh army is struggling to save the new weapons and the
construction of a new deposit for this purpose.
In particular, the Karabakh Armenians are known to have created a new
tank brigade last year. Some defense analysts in Yerevan believe it
is armed with about 100 tanks.
Azerbaijan had begun to receive in June a similar number of tanks and
many other offensive weapons made in Russia with an estimated value of
$ 1 billion. President Ilham Aliyev said last month that "the volume
of military-technical cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan is
estimated at $ 4 billion and it tends to increase." According to the
Moscow newspaper "Vedomosti", the figure cited by Aliyev is "the sum
of all contracts and partly executed since 2010."
Saturday, September 7, 2013, Stephane © armenews.com
From: A. Papazian