There Were No S-300s during Levon Ter –Petrosyan’s Presidency

Recently the Armenian National Congress Party (ANC) spread a video material which featured the achievements during the terms of office of RA first President and current leader of Armenian National Congress Party Levon Ter-Petrosyan.

The video addresses the agreements reached between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Levon Ter-Petrosyan, as a result of which about 1200 Russian servicemen were deployed in Armenia in 1992.

Apart from that, it is claimed in the video that Armenia received arms worth billions of US dollars during the period of 1992-1997, including S-300 air defense systems. However, the aforementioned claim is not true.

Spokesperson of the RA Ministry of Defense Artsrun Hovhannisyan told us that the RA Armed Forces did not have S-300 air defense system as of the year 1997. “The RA Armed Forces received the systems after 2005, in particular 2006-2007, if I remember right”, Hovhannisyan said.

According to the report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, S-300PS systems were supplied to Armenia in 2007-2010.

In 1993-1994, “Krug” systems were purchased from Russia, the efficiency of which is quite low and the range is twice smaller than that of S-300PS already present in Armenia’s armaments, and 4 times smaller than that of S-300PMU-2 supplied to Azerbaijan in 2010.