The Developer of the Iskander Missile System Responds to the Prime Minister of Armenia

In response to Prime Minister Pashinyan's statement regarding the malfunctioning of Russian Iskander missile systems, Vladimir Kovalev, an engineer and developer of the Iskander system, stated that Pashinyan should be ready to "account for his words." In an interview with Komosmolskaya Pravda, Kovalev remarked, "Making such serious accusations against the missile system while openly admitting that he 'does not know' the essence of the issue is neither dignified nor even remotely decent for the Prime Minister of Armenia. And his statement about '80s weaponry' is a clear sign of dilettantism. What '80s weaponry' could he possibly be referring to when even the Russian army completed its acquisition of Iskander systems only at the end of 2019? Armenia received such complexes even earlier in the export variant, after all, we are allies,” said Kovalev.

He added that he has witnessed the system being tested dozens of times and cannot recall a single incident where the warhead did not detonate. "For such an event to occur, one would either have to remove the warhead from the missile or entrust the maintenance of the system to amateurs. And we still need to determine whether incompetents were responsible for servicing before firing the Iskanders," Kovalev noted.

"Do you know what I thought of when Pashinyan said that the combat charge detonated only 10 percent? That the Prime Minister urgently needs to rid himself of his ignorance. Yes, yes. He needs a 'literacy course.' He probably heard at the edge of his ear that the combat charge power of the exported Iskander is 10 percent less than the Russian version. Moscow has never hidden this from Yerevan. But Pashinyan mixed everything up. And what a laughable statement it was, claiming that the Armenian missile's combat charge detonates only 10 percent! Such absurdities do not even occur in well-known Armenian anecdotes,” the developer emphasized.

Finally, he highlighted that Pashinyan has remained silent about a very important matter and reminded, "When one or two poorly targeted missiles fired by the Armenian Iskander detonated not far from these significant oil and gas facilities in Azerbaijan, Baku clearly understood that the war needed to be stopped. And you too need to realize what enormous losses Azerbaijan's economy would incur, even if the Iskander's combat charge detonated with that ridiculous Pashinyan 10 percent... But it wouldn't be trivial for Baku...,” Kovalev concluded.