Serzh Sargsyan: Apart from Russia, Armenia intends to use the possibilities of acquiring weapons from other countries in the context of long-term cooperation with them

ArmInfo. Armenia's acquisition of arms and military equipment is carried out in accordance with schedule, in this issue the main partner of the republic is Russia - one of the main suppliers of weapons. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan stated at the meeting with the leadership of the Armenian Armed Forces by.

"Agreements with Russia allow us to acquire modern weapons under the most competitive conditions, but we intend to use other opportunities in this sphere in the conditions of our long-term cooperation with other countries," Sargsyan said.

He stressed that Armenia is not responsible for the arms race by quantity, but focuses on the effectiveness of weapons. "Armenia always has and will have effective means to contain the enemy at any time and on any scale. When we talk about deterrence, this does not mean just preventing an attack - more, it means putting down preemptive strikes that discourage the enemy from breaking the ceasefire regime that was signed back in 1994-95," Sargsyan said.

According to the Armenian-Russian agreement on granting Armenia a 200-million loan, for this amount the Armed Forces of the republic purchased and purchased rocket launchers 9K58 Smerch of the Igla-S missile system, Avtobaz-M passive radio-technical reconnaissance system, TOS-1A "Solntsepek", armored vehicles "Tiger", anti-tank missile systems "Tursun-M", antitank grenade launchers RPG-26, small arms, engines and sights for T-72 and BMP tanks, communication equipment, engineering equipment, KamAZ ". The agreement on granting a loan on preferential terms - to start a loan with a 3% rate Yerevan will start only in 2018 in rubles for 10 years, and an advance payment of only 10% was concluded in 2015. Thus, taking into account the continuing devaluation of the Russian currency, as well as the republic's membership in the CSTO, which allows buying weapons at domestic prices, for $ 200 million, the Armenian republics can acquire an unlimited number of Russian weapons. Subsequently, Armenia and Russia signed another agreement on the supply of weapons for $ 100 million.