Pashinyan highlights “historic” situation, says Armenia moving toward fully d

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan delivered an address on Monday on the National Security Service Border Guard Day.

Addressing the NSS border troops, Pashinyan highlighted that border delimitation with Azerbaijan will soon continue.

He said the finalization of the delimitation of the border with Georgia, which is not formally delimited, is also on the agenda.

Pashinyan highlighted the current “historic situation” pertaining to the newly established peace and emphasized the demarcated and delimited 12-kilometer border section with Azerbaijan.

“Today, your service in the Republic of Armenia is taking place in an exceptionally historic situation, when for the first time since the independence of the Republic of Armenia, all border crossing points of the Republic of Armenia are under control, and service there is carried out by the border troops of the Republic of Armenia. The next important development regarding the borders of the Republic of Armenia is that for already two years we have had a demarcated and delimited 12-kilometer border section with Azerbaijan, where the border troops of the Republic of Armenia are serving. This is also a very important and exceptional situation, and I must note that this 12-kilometer section is the only part of the Armenia–Azerbaijan border where representatives of the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan serve without helmets, without bulletproof vests, and with their rifle magazines not attached to their rifles, but kept in their bags,” noted Pashinyan.

The Prime Minister emphasized that this took place by an agreement reached between the Government of the Republic of Armenia and the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as between their border guard troops.

“This forces us to notice the obvious: border guard troops are usually a symbol of peace. Where border guards stand at the border, in most cases peace prevails along that border. Our desire and goal is for all borders of the Republic of Armenia to be under the responsibility of border guard troops, and we are moving in that direction.

In the near future, of course, we will continue and, within reasonable timeframes, complete the delimitation of the border between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan. We also have on our agenda the process of finalizing the delimitation of our border with Georgia, and we already have agreements on this with our Georgian partners.

In this way, essentially, the delimitation and demarcation of Armenia’s borders will be completed, and our state will be able to focus more confidently on its development agenda within its internationally recognized territory,” said Nikol Pashinyan.

According to the Prime Minister, the border guard is also “one of the most important symbols of the state, sovereignty, and independence.”

“When it is said that the border will be delimited and demarcated, our desire is for our military personnel to have the opportunity to carry out their service in permanent deployment locations. For decades, our army has spent much of its service in trenches and positions, the conditions of which, due to well-known circumstances, are not the best.

We are now also carrying out fortification work along the borders, implementing large-scale engineering works. But our goal is that at a certain point, we will also hand over those fortified areas to the border guard troops, so that the border guards will also carry out service there.

Of course, this will take place under conditions of full peace, toward which we are moving with increasing confidence with each month, each week, and each day. Our region is undergoing historic changes, and these changes are undoubtedly positive. Our task is for the functional role of the border guard troops in the Republic of Armenia, as well as the scale of their service, to gradually expand,” noted Pashinyan.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan expressed his gratitude to the border guard troops, noting that the new missions assigned to them require a higher level of professionalism and greater responsibility.