YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 15, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan chaired a meeting of the Security Council. Aside from members of the Security Council, the Speaker of Parliament Alen Simonyan, Prime Minister’s Office Chief of Staff Arayik Harutyunyan and Parliament Majority Leader (Civil Contract Party) Hayk Konjoryan were also in attendance.

“Since yesterday we’ve had several meetings and discussions in this composition and various formats,” the Prime Minister said at the meeting. “The subject of discussions was the fact of Azerbaijani troops invading into the territory of the Republic of Armenia in one of the eastern parts of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The goal of today’s session is to summarize the discussions and also to provide complete information to our public on the developments. Before that I’d like to emphasize that I have made a decision to dismiss Arshak Karapetyan as Minister of Defense and to appoint [Deputy PM] Suren Papikyan instead. This decision was made as a result of analyzing the developments taking place since yesterday. I’ve invited Mr. Karapetyan in the morning and thanked him for his work as Minister of Defense, I told him that I appreciate what he’s done, but right now the situation led me to a decision that there should be a change of the Minister of Defense. Today we will first of all listen to the briefing of the Chief of General Staff Mr. Davtyan on the situation and generally the tactical situation, and we will also analyze the situation and we will try to make a decision on several directions regarding our actions aimed at defending the security, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Republic of Armenia,” Pashinyan said.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan