Both incidents occurred at Armenian army posts in eastern Gegharkunik region bordering Azerbaijan.
Military investigators said one of the soldiers, Karen Karapetian, was shot and killed by a comrade early in the morning. The latter was arrested hours later.
As of Wednesday evening, the Investigative Committee made no statements about the alleged shooter’s motives. Nor did the law-enforcement body say anything about the reason for what it described as suicide committed by the other victim, Mikael Danielian, later in the morning.
The chief of the Armenian army’s General Staff, Lieutenant-General Eduard Asrian, rushed to the headquarters of an army corps deployed in Gegharkunik hours after the shootings.
“Everything must be done to exclude similar cases in the future,” Asrian told its top officers.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in turn gave such instructions to Papikian and the army’s top brass when he visited the Defense Ministry in Yerevan on Wednesday morning.
Pashinian pledged to successfully tackle noncombat deaths of military personnel after he came to power in 2018. However, the problem has remained just as chronic since then.
January 2023 saw one of the deadliest noncombat incidents ever registered in the Armenian army ranks. Fifteen conscripts serving in Gegharkunik were found dead at their military barracks destroyed by a major fire. Papikian, who is a leading member of Pashinian’s party, faced calls for resignation from their relatives, opposition figures and human rights activists in the wake of the tragedy.
Andranik Kocharian, the chairman of the Armenian parliament committee on defense and security, dismissed such calls reignited by the latest deaths.
“You immediately want sensational sackings,” an irritated Kocharian told journalists. “That’s wrong. If we followed that path no official would retain his post.”
Tigran Abrahamian, an opposition lawmaker, said the latest incidents raised more questions about “defense reforms” promised by Pashinian’s administration following the 2020 war with Azerbaijan.
“The authorities must admit that they are not carrying reforms in that area or that the reforms have failed,” Abrahamian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“No matter how much you reform the army, no matter how successful those reforms are, there will always be crimes and accidents in the army,” countered Armen Khachatrian, another pro-government parliamentarian. “They should just be reduced to a minimum.”
Khachatrian claimed that the number of noncombat deaths has steadily fallen in recent years. Official figures tell a different story, however.
In particular, only 20 of 75 Armenian servicemen who died in 2023 were killed as a result of ceasefire violations on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The Armenian military reported 50 noncombat deaths in 2022.