The French “Legion of Honor” against the Turkish “Golden Eagle”. Pashinyan’s “cute

On the evening of March 27, RA Defense Minister Suren Papikyan from France informed that by the decree of President Emmanuel Macron, he was awarded the “Legion d’honneur” medal of the French Republic, which was handed over by Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, taking into account Papikyan’s contribution to the development of Armenia-France relations.

 

It should be noted that Sebastien Lecorne will be the Minister of the Armed Forces of France in February 2024 had visited Armenia:

Anyway, hours after this information published by Papikyan, Nikol Pashinyan made the following post from the series of “lovely letters” on his Facebook page, saying:

“Such a lovely letter.

Hello Mr. Prime Minister, please consider your request to grant me another rank (major general). My title is colonel.

Thank you in advance.”

This post of a person who always hates the army, always has fears and complexes about the army is multi-layered, it has several footnotes.

First, this is perhaps the usual Pashinyan jealousy. That is, Nikol Pashinyan, who in 2025 by Kasim-Jomart Tokaev was awarded Turkic state with the highest state award of Kazakhstan – “Golden Eagle”, and in 2026 “Zayed” human brotherhood award had shared With Aliyev, he would very much like to have a high award from a country like France.

But here and there, until Pashinyan announces in Yerevan that he himself gives an account of what kind of state France is, and usually he himself asks for a meeting with the French leader, his party’s Minister of Defense is awarded the Legion of Honor (Legion d’honneur) by Macron’s decree. The same Macron that Nikol Pashinyan in 2025 had transferred France’s solidarity against attempts to destabilize Armenian democracy, but Armenia has promised and unfulfilled visits, always Pashinyan visited France and requested a meeting with Macron.

It should be noted that we have written many times about Suren Papikyan being targeted by Pashinyan and his followers, perhaps the forced fight against the gunners was one of those.

If it seemed to Suren Papikyan, or it seems that Pashinyan will spare him or trust him unconditionally because he is a party member, and the ministers who preceded him, the former heads of the RA Armed Forces were targeted because they were not members of the political or party team, or because Pashinyan did not trust them from the beginning, he is wrong.

Pashinyan himself chose all the former ministers of defense and the heads of the General Staff, and at least in the beginning he publicly appreciated and trusted him, but at some point that attitude and trustmy mood is gone. Pashinyan’s ministerial elections are a different matter were for a specific period and mission.

Secondly, in the logic of the above, let’s continue that this post by Pashinyan is dangerous, because even if there is no such letter, then this is a bad precedent and an impulse that one can bypass the Minister of Defense, his powers, to put it bluntly, “jump over his head”.

By the way, before Pashinyan, a member of the CP made a similar attempt When Lilit Minasyan said in one of the interviews that citizens can contact her and she will arrange for them to see the samples of the acquired weapons (there was no information about the public display yet), and there was no word about getting permission from Suren Papikyan or not. In other words, the members of the CP, who teach lessons to the opposition circles, the head of the government themselves do not respect the official status of their minister.

And what does the law define regarding the awarding of military ranks, in general?

“On military service and serviceman’s status” RA of the law Article 15 on regular military rank defines: «The procedure for awarding a military rank, the forms of presentation and orders for awarding a military rank shall be determined by the head of the state authorized body. And in Article 16 of the same law, under the heading “Bodies awarding military rank”, it is stated:

“1. Military rank is awarded:

1) The President of the Republic of Armenia – the military ranks of the highest officers on the recommendation of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia.

2) the head of the state authorized body – senior officer and “lieutenant” military ranks;

3) officials defined by the order of the head of the state authorized body – the military ranks of other officers, non-commissioned officers, non-commissioned officers not mentioned in point 2 of this part“Disciplinary Code of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia» Within the limits of the disciplinary law established by the law of the Republic of Armenia.

2. Clause 1 of Part 1 of this Article In accordance with the recommendation of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia on granting military ranks to the highest officers, the draft decree of the President of the Republic on awarding military ranks to the highest officers and the head of the state authorized body are attached. (the state authorized body is considered to be the structure managing the sector, the ministry and not only. – M.P.) appropriate petition.

3. After receiving the recommendation of the Prime Minister, the President of the Republic: within three days, signs the draft decree attached to the recommendation or returns it to the Prime Minister with objections.”

of the RA Armed Forces Disciplinary Code Article 11 clearly states:

– The incentive “Granting early regular military rank” is applied by order and: in the event that not less than half of the period of holding the military rank held by the serviceman has been completed in accordance with the law,

– «awarding a regular military rank one rank higher than the one provided for the post” incentive is applied by order and the term of the serviceman’s military rank and in the event that not less than half of it has been completed, in accordance with the law,

– the procedure for recording incentives is defined by the order of the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia”.

Of course, it should also be understood that not all colonels must necessarily become generals, the letter was written by a person far from the army.

In any case, apart from the mentioned ones, we are dealing with the violation of army subordination, pushing for it, and open contemptuous attitude towards state institutions, if not to say, this is another attempt to belittle and discredit the army, the military.

This was also expressed by the fact that for several years Nikol Pashinyan has not been going to combat bases on New Year’s Eve to congratulate and thank the soldiers and officers. And on Army Day, he visits the RA Ministry of Defense just to give lessons to the generals, to dictate his own agenda it was also this year in the context of which again Suren Papikyan message there was

And the targeting of the army and the military by Pashinyan started immediately after the change of power in 2018, former Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia Davit Tonoyan recalls a number of episodes about this: “Davit Tonoyan. Army, Politics and War” in the book.

Let’s not forget that on February 25, 2021, the RA Armed Forces will statement admitted that «For a long time, the RA armed forces patiently tolerated the “attacks” aimed at discrediting the armed forces by the current government, but everything has its limits.” It is a different matter that some of those who signed this demand were officially promoted in the army.

But it is after this incident that Pashinyan changed the model of army management with an unconstitutional step and made the head of the General Staff the Deputy Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia, which hints at his fears. Interesting (about this many times we wrote), that Pashinyan even saw dangers from time to time from the army led by Suren Papikyan. In particular, in the spring of 2024, from the podium of the National Assembly had announced.

“In February 2021, there was a failed attempt at a military coup. We have learned from what happened and must adopt additional mechanisms to rule out all further attempts to politicize the Armed Forces.”

Let’s go back to the at least publicly anonymous “lovely letter” of the general, and add that on one occasion we wrote also about Pashinyan’s policy of recognizing “advance heroes” and awarding corresponding titles.

And whether the letter is genuine or not has yet to be determined, by the way, under Pashinyan’s corresponding post, we have proposed to publicize the letter and the identity of its writer, we have publicly addressed the RA Defense Minister with the same issue, and we will pursue the issue of publicizing the truth. And as for Suren Papikyan, he still has many difficult days ahead of him.

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