YEREVAN, DECEBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijan has taken the path of exhausting its own special forces. Spokesperson of Armenia Defense Minister Artsrun Hovhannisyan informed about it during the meeting with journalists.

“You can notice that the number of adversary’s victims among conscript soldiers has reduced drastically and that of contract soldiers and officers has increased during the recent two years. What does this speak about? We can say, that they have chosen the path of consuming their so called “

gold reserves”,” “Armenpress” reports, Artsrun Hovhannisyan emphasized.  “Tanks are brought to the fore and fired. And the use of howitzer D-30 is more dangerous. Azerbaijan has brought the tension to such level that all the reserves in the arsenal of regiments and brigades of the front line are being used: no weapon or means has remained in the military units that are not being used.”

The Azerbaijani side has had more than 200 victims since the beginning of the year.

“I can say that as of now, the number of victims of the Azerbaijani side exceeds 210. It is difficult to note the final figures, as we must sum them up from various sources,” he said.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan emphasized that it is meaningless to use the term “ceasefire violation” when speaking about the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, as “basically we no longer have ceasefire”.

“We do not have peace, we have relative calmness,” Spokesperson of Armenia Defense Minister said, adding that the situation was comparatively calm on Armenia-Azerbaijan border and the line of contact last night.

Regarding the use of different weapons by the Azerbaijani party in the line of contact, Hovhannisyan said that the adversary wants to cause serious damage to the Armenian side but it fails, receiving much stronger counterattacks. According to Hovhannisyan, the effectiveness of actions in war situations is determined by disruption of the adversary’s objectives and actions. And the adversary each time tries to cause more damages than one-two victims in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone, but the Armenian side does not permit that, failing their plans.  However, the Armenian side cannot open the brackets and state what preventive measures are being taken in order to fail the enemy’s this or that action. 

Azerbaijan made traditional attempts of subversive acts ahead of the meeting of Armenia and Azerbaijani presidents, as a result of which soldiers of the Defense Army Aghasi Arsen Grigoryan (born in 1996) and Ruben Robert Aleksanyan (born in 1996) heroically died during armed battles on December 17.

As a result of another attempt of a subversive act carried out on December 18, soldier of the Defense Army Fidar Igor Aloyan (born in 1996) sustained a fatal wound.