The Russian military base in Armenia on Wednesday pledged to investigate an unexpected exercise which was conducted by its soldiers in an Armenian village and caused panic among local residents.
Amateur video posted on social media showed chaotic scenes in the village of Panik on Tuesday, with local resident terrified by deafening gunfire and explosions. Some of them angrily confronted the troops training very close to village houses, demanding explanations.
The Russian soldiers stopped the exercise but were able to leave the area only after Armenian police and security officials alerted by the village mayor, Vartan Makeyan, arrived in Panik. It emerged afterwards that they did not fire live rounds.
Makeyan said that the Russian military had not notified him by about the drill beforehand. He also complained that was held within the administrative boundaries of the local community.
Panik is located very close to one of the two shooting grounds used by the Russian base headquartered in the nearby city of Gyumri, the capital of Armenia’s northwestern Shirak province.
The deputy commander of the base, Alexey Polyukhovich, said that it has launched an internal inquiry into the incident. “The exercise was part of efforts to increase the combat readiness of the military base, including for achieving combat tasks set for the base,” he told reporters. “As for what went wrong, we will inform you about the results [of the inquiry.]”
Polyukhovich met with the governor of Shirak, Karen Sarukhanian, earlier in the day. “He said that it was a force-majeure situation, that some order was not issued, that something was not organized, for which he apologized,” Sarukhanian said after the meeting. “An internal inquiry is underway and the guilty will definitely be held accountable.”
In Yerevan, Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan discussed the incident with the commander of the base, Colonel Vladimir Yelkanov, as well as Russia’s charge d’affaires and military attaché in Armenia. Tonoyan’s spokesman, Artsrun Hovannisian, quoted Yelkanov as saying that the exercise had been planned and agreed with the Armenian authorities beforehand but that the Russian side “did not take into account the local population’s possible concerns” and wants to apologize for what happened.
According to Hovannisian, Tonoyan urged the Russians to work more closely with Armenia’s Defense Ministry and local government bodies when planning such drills. They should also “pay greater attention to strengthening good-neighborly relations with the civilian population,” he was reported to say.
Also, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) that he has been briefed on the incident and ensuing developments.
The Russian base numbers up to 5,000 troops mainly deployed along Armenia’s closed border with Turkey. It has hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery systems as well as over a dozen MiG-29 fighter jets. Moscow has bolstered the base with helicopter gunships and other military hardware since a 2010 Russian-Armenian agreement extended its basing rights in Armenia to 2044.
Armenian leaders have long said that Armenia hosts Russian troops on its territory primarily because of a perceived security threat from Turkey. From Yerevan’s perspective, the Russian military presence precludes Turkey’s direct military intervention on Azerbaijan’s side in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Facebook Forum