Armenia's Defense Ministry Refuses to Provide Exact Figures on Occupied Territories

The Armenian Defense Ministry has declined to present accurate data regarding the size of territories occupied by Azerbaijani armed forces, despite contradictory statements from authorities, reports Sputnik.

In particular, Chief of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces, Edward Asryan, stated in October 2022 that the Azerbaijani side had occupied approximately 130 square kilometers of Armenia, according to various estimates. By the end of November 2022, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that Azerbaijan had occupied about 140 square kilometers of Armenia's sovereign territory as a result of three attacks.

In March 2023, Speaker of the National Assembly Alen Simonyan indicated that Azerbaijan had unlawfully occupied around 150 square kilometers of Armenian territory. The same figure was reiterated by Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan on March 23.

Given these discrepancies, the media sent an inquiry to the Armenian Defense Ministry, requesting the exact size of the occupied territories. The Ministry responded that a similar inquiry made on October 4, 2022, had already been addressed in a letter from the Defense Ministry dated October 19, 2022, signed by Chief Secretary Hamlet Batikyan.

However, the Defense Ministry had previously refrained from providing answers to our October 2022 inquiry, citing Article 17 of the Law on State and Service Secrets, as well as Clause 1 of Article 8 of the Law on Freedom of Information, which states that the data contains state or service secrets. Moreover, the ministry referenced requirements established by Government Decision No. 173 from 1998, which pertain to information about the strategic deployment of the armed forces, their numbers, composition, and military-political and operational information.

The ministry did not clarify how the cited articles relate to the information we requested, nor did they explain why the same