Armenia adopts practices of Wagner Group Army instead of prison

An acute shortage of personnel in the Armenian Armed Forces forced the Defence Ministry and conscription offices to go for tricks to put as many people as possible under arms. In particular, in recent years, “tempting” offers have been made to persons involved in criminal cases - release from punishment in exchange for military service.

One of those who had already received a call from the military enlistment office told Radio Liberty's Armenian service that he had been told in clear terms that "you will be exempt from criminal liability if you go to a training camp".

But the young man refused, reporting the incident to lawyer Arsen Mkrtchyan.

"The fraud is to take a person who is not subject to a call-up to a training camp," the radio station quoted the lawyer as saying.

Mkrtchyan himself has faced this kind of thing twice before, with one of his defendants having already gone on a training camp, but the charge has never been dropped.

The defendants, Mkrtchyan added, are asked to sign an undertaking not to leave the country; if they go to a training camp, their address changes, the investigation is hindered and delayed. On the other hand, the order of the training camp is violated. But most importantly, how can military enlistment offices interfere in the work of law-enforcement agencies and promise to close cases?

Military enlistment offices do so due to a lack of resources, he said.

However, the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on defence affairs, Andranik Kocharyan, denies these reports. As the MP from the ruling party noted, this mechanism "is used in the Russian-Ukrainian war, but not in Armenia".

"Those who say such things are probably confused: in the Russian-Ukrainian war such forces are used, there are such mechanisms, in Armenia, such mechanisms do not and cannot exist," the MP said.

Kocharyan is not, however, to be believed - last year he also publicly suggested that the deputy police chief use the training camps as punishment and take men detained at opposition protests to the camps.

Nazeli Movsesyan, a representative of the Vanadzor office of the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly, who specialises in military issues, said that a man also approached her, informing her of his status as an accused: he too had received a call offering to take part in the assembly in return for dropping the charges.