‘Instead of Tor, They Took Toy Airplanes’: Vazgen Manukyan

“The army’s destruction began in 2018. Under the guise of corruption, they started to intervene, arrest various generals, dismiss them, and open criminal cases... They shattered the entire leadership of Artsakh, pushed out the generals, and instilled distrust within the army,” stated Vazgen Manukyan, the prime ministerial candidate of the Homeland Salvation Movement, today in the city of Ararat.

“The next step that was being organized to lead us to defeat was the modernization of the army regarding weapons,” Manukyan added.

“In 2016, Azerbaijan attempted to attack and faced failure. We also suffered losses, including territorial ones, but Azerbaijan realized that it was up against the same army that had defeated it, and stopped the war,” he noted.

According to Manukyan, during the April War, lessons were learned that UAVs and new technologies were necessary. “Nothing was done for us to have those. In the list that we submitted to Russia about which weapons we should purchase during the previous administration, ‘Tor’ systems were mentioned, meaning the devices designed to destroy UAVs. That was removed, and instead, they took toy airplanes… They were very powerful, but had no benefit during the war and were not used,” Manukyan declared.