We must say directly that we are living in a security crisis” – Pashinyan

“We must say directly that we are living in a security crisis,” stated Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, “No one is willing to evade responsibility for this.” According to Pashinyan, there are great uncertainties.

He addressed the opposition's criticism regarding spending existing funds on the security system rather than on street asphalt. “There is logic in this, but it is not comprehensive, because asphalt also has security significance; asphalt is also about the mobility of the army and the mobility of the security system,” he noted.

Pashinyan emphasized that it is impossible to fully utilize the existing funds due to objective or subjective reasons. “When you were in power, you managed well, it was excluded that the opposition would manage better. Today it is us who are in government, we manage better. There is no argument here. And when I talk about a security crisis, we must understand what kind of crisis it is. This is a crisis of the security architecture created during our independence. This was not created in 2020, but rather earlier. We can mention specific years. October 27 was also mentioned. This was the result of a profound and severe crisis in our security architecture,” he said.

According to him, this crisis occurred in 2011 when Russia began selling weapons to Azerbaijan, and it was also a crisis in 2016. “You were signing an association agreement with the EU, and then one day you suddenly decided not to sign the association agreement. What happened, that you decided one day? You had been negotiating for three years to sign the association agreement, and then it turned around. What happened, how did it happen, what were you negotiating, how did you negotiate?”