Pashinyan voices need for military reforms, development of skills of contract servicemen

YEREVAN, MAY 28, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan says the military requires serious and deep reforms.

“There should be a serious revision regarding the salaries of contract servicemen, with the condition that they must be professional soldiers,” Pashinyan said during a meeting with members of his Civil Contract party. “Some, but not all of our contract servicemen where serving active duty for 14-15 days, and then they would go and do some other jobs for 14 days, farming or taxi driving or something else. The next 15 days of the months of contract servicemen has nothing to do with military service.”

Pashinyan said that the job of soldiers must be the development of tactical, strategic and firearms skills. “This is what we mean when we say a professional army. Moreover, our perception is the following – that the soldier should be in the military base and not in a border trench, because guarding the border is the job of the border guards. During this time the soldiers must be in the military base and should constantly develop tactical and technical skills, so that they have the skills of rapid deployment and taking action whenever there is an alarm of a border breach,” he said.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan