Expert: Pashinyan's appointees to destroy Armenian army

The appointment of the ex-mayor of Yerevan Hrachya Sargsyan as Deputy Minister of Defence was another, to put it mildly, the extraordinary decision of the Armenian authorities.

Perhaps, in terms of the degree of surprise, this decision is inferior only to the appointment of Minister Suren Papikyan, who worked as a history teacher before the change of power, and after the “Velvet Revolution” became Minister of Territorial Administration, according to Caliber.Az, the Armenian media write about it.

“Now another figure, far from the military sphere, has been placed in an extremely responsible military-political position. In conditions when the country's armed forces are faced with extremely non-trivial tasks of reforming and ‘recovering’ from defeat in the 44-day war, it would seem that the defence department needs people with military management experience, the ability to perform hard and painstaking work in a complex military-political environment. But the ruling team of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, by whose decision Sargsyan was appointed, seems to be guided by a different logic,” the article says.

According to military expert Narek Nersisyan, the appointment of the former mayor as deputy defence minister can be explained both by the principle of loyalty and the lack of personnel in general.

“Theoretically, it could be assumed that in the conditions of a shortage of personnel in the political team, Pashinyan could go for ‘outsourcing’, i.e. attract people who have the necessary qualities, but are not members of this team. However, as the expert explains, the authorities do not need this ‘outsourcing’. The whole problem lies in the unwillingness of the authorities to be guided by state, and not by narrow group interests. And the armed forces in this case become victims of such conformism and short-sightedness,” Nersisyan believes.

“The biggest problem with the current leadership is management. On the one hand, we are dealing with a lack of professionals in the cadre of the ruling team, on the other hand, there is a desire to appoint ‘their own’ person at any cost, under any circumstances, regardless of his professional and personal qualities. For people in power, ‘loyalty’ is the main criterion for this or that appointment,” the expert said in an interview with the media.

According to him, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which one of the lower-ranking officials contradicts the Minister of Defence, disputes his actions and decisions, and has his own firm point of view.

Such a person is inconvenient for the authorities, it is uncomfortable for them to work with such a person, therefore they took the path of least resistance, making a choice in favour of an obedient person who has proven his readiness to faithfully serve and not object. As a result, it turns out that the ruling power, criticizing its predecessors and blaming them for all the troubles of the country, goes the same way.

Nersisyan also does not exclude that the appointment of Sargsyan was the price for his tacit consent to leave the post of mayor of the capital.

The expert is confident that in the medium and long term, the personnel policy in the Armenian Armed Forces, based on loyalty, will have an extremely negative impact on the army.

First of all, Nersisyan is afraid of the leakage of personnel from the army, mostly of high quality, trained.

“People, on whose shoulders lies the main burden of responsibility for the functioning of the apparatus of the Ministry of Defence (and this is the junior and middle levels), will gradually leave, having no incentive for further work. Not to mention active troops, commanders, officers, generals, who, as far as I can tell, have been in a rather difficult psychological state for a long time,” he added.

From Nersisyan's point of view, the allegations that the ex-mayor was appointed as an experienced techie and business executive do not stand up to criticism. The financial and economic block of the Ministry of Defense is already supervised by the deputy head of the department Karen Brutyan, no one removed him from his post, respectively, there are no special functions in the Armenian Defence Ministry that require the urgent intervention of the former mayor.