Serzh Sargsyan: If war forced upon us, we will have to fight

During his visit to Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs today, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan answered questions of participants of the consultation held at the ministry, in particular the question about the reality of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s threats to solve the Karabakh problem by military means and about the measures that the Armenian side has taken in response to the neighboring state’s militarization.

“How long has Aliyev been making such statements? If he can do it, why didn’t he do it? If he is going to do it, why does he declare that? You know, even under such circumstances I cannot rule out the possibility of a resumption of hostilities, but I don’t see such a prospect in the foreseeable future. If a war is forced upon us, we will have to fight. You also asked me what actions we are taking in this connection. Well, the members of special units sent by Baku outnumbered the Armenian side’s forces by three or four to one, but they failed to perform their task, in fact they botched it and suffered more losses than our soldiers on their military posts,” S. Sargsyan said.

The president stressed that combat training of the Armenian army is at quite a high level. “The equipment of our positions corresponds to the present situation. If any of you visits our frontline positions, you will see how skillfully our commanders and soldiers arrange various traps and signal means and use various tricks on their positions,” the head of state said.
In his words, after the Azerbaijani subversive act two years ago, the Armenian side took the respective measures and it is no accident that the recent attempt of Azerbaijan failed.

“That is to say, measures were then taken: we, senior commanders, took steps for our part, junior commanders for their part. More importantly, our privates also made contribution to this cause,” the president said.

According to S. Sargsyan, arms depots, arsenals, weaponry and equipment of the Armenia army are being actively upgraded and equipped so the Armenian army is not inferior to the others even though billions are not spent on it.

“It is obvious that we don’t want war, but if it is forced upon us, we will have no option. On the other hand, we will do our best to solve the problem by peaceful means,” the Armenian president said.