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During the Q&A session at the RA National Assembly on March 1, Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan said that the military equipment of the Armenian side did not function during April war last year because of poor quality of fuel.
“We have doubts that the fuel is later mixed with kerosene, and, as a result, we have low quality oil products in the market. You remember very well that during April events, there were numerous cases when our equipment did not function specifically for that reason”, Karen Karapetyan noted in the National Assembly.
The same opinion was expressed by Mr. Karapetyan during the election campaign of the Republican Party of Armenia in Avan District of Yerevan on March 13.
Nevertheless, according to other government agencies, the aforementioned statements of Karen Karapetyan are not true. In particular, on March 14, the RA Ministry of Defense officially denied existence of problems due to poor quality fuel in the army, noting that the fuel is subjected to checks and there were no instances of failing equipment during the April war.
“There were no instances of failure of special combat vehicles due to fuel-related problems during 4-day April war in 2016, and, hence, there were no cases of failure to perform combat tasks”, the RA Prosecutor General’s Office stated, in its turn, in response to the enquiry from Radio Liberty’s Armenian service on March 17.
In fact, this view is also confirmed by former Defense Minister, leader of “ORO” bloc Seyran Ohanyan, who announced a few weeks ago that there were no problems with fuel during April war.
Thus, it turns out that RA Prime Minister’s statements have been denied both by the RA Ministry of Defense and the RA Prosecutor General’s Office. In such a situation, it is obvious that one of the sides is lying.
Note that in November 2016, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Office published a report, where it was noted that the military equipment failed to reach the defense lines because of issues related to batteries and fuel.
