Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan chaired consultation in the Defense Ministry’s headquarters, which discussed the results of the strategic army exercises held from September 24 to October 5. The meeting was attended by Minister of Defense David Tonoyan, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Artak Davtyan, Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan, Mayor of Yerevan Hayk Marutyan and senior officers of the Armed Forces.

In his speech, Prime Minister Pashinyan noted: “We are here to sum up the results of the recently held strategic exercises, and I want to emphasize that the exercises were of paramount importance. The drills were actually supposed to answer the question of how well our armed forces, the public administration system and the public at large were prepared to address the emerging challenges. In this regard, the most important statement that can be made before the official debriefing is that society responded promptly and favorably to the exercises. This is extremely important. After all, we had the opportunity to show the importance of the atmosphere of trust in the country from the perspective of national security and army’s combat readiness. We had been talking about consolidation for many years as a theoretical phenomenon, and now we can state it in practice.”

The Prime Minister emphasized that the government has taken and will continue to take consistent steps to ensure uninterrupted supply of armaments and equipment. The Premier pointed out that the drills were perceived quite favorably by the military and the officers.

“We can state that the military exercises raised our confidence in our troops’ organizational resources and collective strength. Even the ordinary staff, the rank-and-file, could feel themselves stronger following the drills. At this point, we must identify the shortcomings and plan our future activities in such a way as to carry out targeted work in this direction and boost the troops’ combat readiness,” Nikol Pashinyan said.

The Prime Minister expressed confidence that today’s discussion would be of service to the Armed Forces in terms of organizing teamwork in the system of public administration, as a whole.

In conclusion, the Chief of the General Staff presented a professional analysis of the exercises.