President Serzh Sargsyan on Saturday visited the Armenian-Russian military air base in Yerevan’s Erebuni Airport to watch the two joint military drills organized by the two countries’ air forces.
The event is part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s (CSTO) Parliamentary Assembly’s assizes in Yerevan.
According to an official statement by the presidential press office, Sargsyan was accompanied by Sergey Naryshkin, the Russian State Duma speaker who chairs the meeting, CSTO Secretary-General Nikolay Bordyuzha, Armenian Minister of Defenses Seyran Ohanya, representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly and officials from the two countries’ respective government agencies.
The air-forces’ representatives demonstrated samples of their modern military equipment and armament, and the military air crew’s outfit. The guests later watched demonstration flights.
Armenia To Host More CSTO Drills
Armenia – Soldiers lined up for a CSTO military exercise near Yerevan,
The head of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) visited Yerevan on Monday for a second time in less than two months to discuss preparations for military exercises which the Russian-led defense pact will hold in Armenia this year.
According to official Armenian sources, the issue topped the agenda of Nikolay Bordyuzha’s talks with President Serzh Sarkisian and Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian. They gave no dates for the annual exercises codenamed “Indestructible Brotherhood.”
The most recent CSTO drills took place in Kyrgyzstan in July-August last year. They involved about 1,000 troops from the six ex-Soviet states aligned in the bloc: Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Armenia most recently hosted major CSTO exercises in September 2012. The 2,000 or so participating troops were part of the CSTO’s Collective Operational Reaction Forces (CORF) created in 2009. The war games were watched by then Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.
Bordyuzha and Lieutenant-General Aleksandr Studenikin, the CSTO’s top military official accompanying him, also discussed with the Armenian leaders regional security. Sarkisian’s press office said they spoke about the CSTO’s role in “maintaining security in the Caucasus region.” It did not elaborate.
Bordyuzha expressed serious concern at the latest escalation of fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone during his previous visit to Armenia in early February.
Speaking at a January 30 news conference in Moscow, Bordyuzha reportedly ruled out a direct CSTO intervention in the Karabakh conflict. Armenian critics of close military ties with Russia seized upon those remarks to again accuse the CSTO of failing to honor its defense obligations to a member state.
Ohanian dismissed such criticism earlier in January. He insisted that the Armenian army is strong enough to contain Azerbaijan without a direct Russian or CSTO intervention.
Russia, Serbia To Hold Joint Military Drills
November 06, 2014
BELGRADE — Russia and Serbia are preparing to hold their first-ever joint antiterrorist exercises on Serbian territory.
RFE/RL’s correspondent in Belgrade reports that six IL-76 aircraft from Russia arrived at a Belgrade airport on November 6.
Russian media quoted Defense Ministry officials in Moscow on November 5 as saying units from paratroopers in Tula will take part in the joint maneuvers, which are scheduled in the coming days.
The exercises will be held near the city of Nikinci in the northern province of Vojvodina.
Serbian military analyst Ljubodrag Stojadinovic told RFE/RL that joint maneuvers with Russian troops on this scale have never been held in Serbia.
He added that in holding the maneuvers, Moscow is trying to demonstrate that it has allies in Europe.
Armenia, Artsakh Conduct Large-Scale Military Drills
STEPANAKERT (RFE/RL)—The armed forces of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh have been engaged in large-scale military exercises in the past few days, a Defense Ministry spokesman in Yerevan confirmed on Thursday.
Artsrun Hovhannisian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service (Azatutyun.am) that the drills are a scheduled arrangement. “From year to year these drills become more upgraded in terms of their nature, depth and professional features in accordance with the requirements of the time,” he said.
The Defense Ministry official described the military exercises as “multifaceted and diverse,” saying that they involved both current armed forces and reserves.
“The goal of any exercises is to raise the combat readiness of the armed forces,” Hovhannisian added.
The official representative neither confirmed nor denied media reports about assemblies of reservists, adding that the reserve force is also part of the armed forces. However, he did not link the drills to the current situation at the Armenian border with Azerbaijan. According to him, the situation at the borders is relatively calm today.
Azerbaijan, too, regularly holds large-scale military exercises along the border with Nagorno-Karabakh. It has repeatedly threatened to use military force to regain control of the region that broke free from Baku’s rule as a result of hostilities against Armenians in the early 1990s. Authorities in Baku, at the same time, have also expressed their hope to settle the dispute diplomatically through internationally mediated talks with Armenia.
In early August, Armenia and Azerbaijan appeared to be on the brink of renewed hostilities amid an unprecedented escalation of violence in the conflict zone. The sides blamed each other for skirmishes and commando raids in which at least two dozen servicemen were killed.
Relative calm was restored after a Russia-mediated meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents, Serzh Sarkisian and Ilham Aliyev.
The two leaders last met with the mediation of French President Francois Hollande on October 27. At the Paris talks the parties were urged to show ‘political will’ to overcome their differences and prepare their peoples for peace.