Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan chaired a meeting of the Security Council. Aside from the members of the Security Council, the President of Parliament Alen Simonyan, Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister’s Office Arayik Harutyunyan and head of parliamentary faction of Civil Contract Party Hayk Konjoryan were also attended the meeting.

At the beginning of the session, Prime Minister Pashinyan said,

“Honorable Speaker of the National Assembly,

Distinguished members of the Security Council,

Dear Colleagues,

Since yesterday we’ve had several meetings and discussions in this composition and various formats. 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 drelieve Arshak Karapetyan of the post of Defense Minister and to appoint Suren Papikyan instead, who currently holds the position of Deputy Prime Minister.

This decision was made as a result of analyzing the developments taking place since yesterday. I 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 report of the Chief of the General Staff, Mr. Davtyan on the situation and the tactical situation in general, and we will also analyze the situation and we will try to make decisions on several directions regarding our actions aimed at defending the security, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Republic of Armenia”.