Papikyan refuses to provide part of the price tags of weapons promised by Pashinyan

On March 16, Pashinyan confirmed our information. Has the verbal agreement with Aliyev already been reached? article: published, where we referred to the possible public display of weapons acquired after 2022 in May.

Moreover, Nikol Pashinyan justified this idea by the fact that the state debt has increased because they also bought weapons, so they decided to present a public report to the public in the near future so that citizens can see what it is about.

Accordingly, on March 18, we sent a written request to the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia to find out how much the state debt increased just for the purchase of weapons, or how much money was spent on the purchase of new and modern weapons after 2022. This is especially for him, because in November 2025, Pashinyan said: “8 billion foreign debt has increased, what did we do, we bought weapons”, and 168.am wrote, that months before the war, the head of the General Staff of the RA Armed Forces, Onik Gasparyan, suggested to Pashinyan that “in general, 8 billion US dollars were needed to solve the problems facing the armed forces”, which was not taken into account, and even in the case of another General Staff, the proposal to solve some problems with a smaller amount than this.

But in its response within 5 days, the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia refused to provide the requested information in this regard, based on Article 8, Clause 1, Sub-Clause 1 of the RA Law “On Freedom of Information” and the Government of the Republic of Armenia dated 11.01.2024. The requirements of Clause 15 of Resolution N5Z-N, as well as Clause 172 of Order N 797-Л of the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia dated May 16, 2024 “On Approving the Expanded Departmental List of Encrypted Information of the RA Defense System”.

And this is the case when Nikol Pashinyan announced last year in November.

“Did we buy weapons on debt? Yes, we bought weapons on debt. Why, because we needed a lot and all at once… You don’t believe that you have the right? I say, let’s take it, show it, we can also stick price tags on it, which is what it costs.”

By the way, we got acquainted with the samples of new weapons in a closed format, there were no price tags.

We asked the Ministry of Defense to tell us how much money was spent on the purchase of weapons in 2019, as Pashinyan announced at the time that In 2019, the armed forces acquired an unprecedented amount of weapons and ammunition.

In addition, taking into account the fact that until today there are various rumors about the price of Su-30SM multi-purpose aircraft (without the missiles mentioned by Pashinyan) and Osa-AK anti-aircraft missile complexes, we asked Suren Papikyan to provide information: how much was paid for 4 Su-30s, and how much for Osa-AKs? However, the provision of this information was also refused.

It should be noted that Andranik Kocharyan, the chairman of the Standing Committee on Defense and Security Affairs of the National Assembly, has more than once “name pasted” also to the weapons bought during Pashinyan’s rule, saying. “We had wrong acquisitions of weapons. I sent the information collected by the Investigative Commission, a huge package, to the Prosecutor General of RA.”

It’s a different question, how objective and how subjective are his claims.

By the way, Andranik Kocharyan, who headed the 44-day investigative commission, seems to have decided to focus on these topics again and through this to remind the former military leaders who still left some of his statements unanswered. Let’s wait for further developments.

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