What is the Situation in Vardenis? The Mayor Clarifies

Today, rumors began to circulate early in the morning that the enemy has advanced their positions by 3 km in the Vardenis region. In an interview with ArmDaily.am, the mayor of Vardenis, Aram Melikonyan, stated that panic ensued this morning over the reports of enemy advancements. “We came to the Vardenis mountain, which is quite far from Verin Shorzha, and it turned out these are the areas where they had not stationed positions in the winter, but GPS indicated those areas were under their control. In the winter, they claimed they would not be positioned there but would come in the summer. Now we are recalibrating with GPS, but our troops are coming now. Half of the troops have ascended to the positions to stand in front of our posts. It is still snowing in those mountains, but we are climbing,” he explained.

When asked whether the enemy had ascended without warning during the night, he replied, “They rose to their positions without any warning in the morning.” Addressing the question of whether there had been any clashes or shots fired, Melikonyan stated, “Absolutely no shots have been fired. Just now, the commander of the 2nd Army Corps approached, spoke with them, and the Azerbaijanis said that if we entered your territory, we will go back just as far as we have advanced, but we are checking with GPS. Our commander insisted they should retreat 300 meters, and they gathered and retreated 300 meters.”