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Relative Calm on Frontline, Says Hetq Editor Reporting from Artsakh
It was relatively calm at the Artsakh battle positions last night. There were shots fired from the Azerbaijani side, but they did not cause any harm, said Hetq editor-in-chief Edik Baghdasaryan from Artsakh.
Baghdasaryan earlier today spoke with the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh press officer Senor Hasratyan, who assured him there were no recorded incidents — apart from the constant firing from Azerbaijan.
Baghdasaryan yesterday visited military units where recent incidents at the border occurred and spoke with soldiers and officers. He described the details of his visit to the Hetq team in Yerevan by phone:
"In general, things were calm at the military units. I felt a bit of tension [in the air] because the boys haven't been sleeping normally for 3 days — they're taking shifts [around the clock]. There's some tiredness, but when we spoke about [their] actions, they began to get excited, describing how it happened, how they resisted.
"In the vicinity of the military units yesterday I saw the old guys who fought, who had come to take shifts at the frontline. There's a group working unofficially like a kibbutz in Karabakh — in situations of war they gather and appear on the frontline. In Stepanakert yesterday I spoke with a few of them who are preparing to go to the frontline. I don't know if this is official or not, but the Karabakh authorities have never spoken about this. I tried to verify this, [but] they neither confirmed nor denied such a thing. But when I spoke with the boys, they said, of course, when something happens, we have to be with the soldiers and take the soldiers to battle, if necessary.
"The population is anxious about the situation, but there's no tension. They're anxious as in a period of war because there is almost no family that doesn't have a member serving in the army — especially in recent days, [when] no one's coming home [and] all are taking shifts.
"Azerbaijani misinformation, which constantly spews out different things, [the population] doesn't particularly take seriously […] I also spoke with high-ranking officers, who tie this [i.e. the misinformation] with the manifold Azerbaijani victims and concealing the real number of their victims. But with the various information received it becomes understandable that they can't hide this for long. Today they say there was an incident, but those victims were [as a result of] incidents that occurred a few days ago. They have a great number of injured because when our guys pushed back, they also injured the rear and, in fact, they had a large number of casualties.
"I spoke with a few of the intelligence agents. They say that Azerbaijan doesn't have anything to be particularly happy about because there are sections where their positions are empty. The Azerbaijanis take shifts standing [guarding the border] only in the afternoons. I think, their defense minister must have big problems because [these] are revealed also with our actions: when our guys retaliate their attacks, the unorganized situation prevailing in their army is revealed. In fact, an army having such a military budget and arms, it seems, has no value.
"Yesterday I spoke with one of the guys; he was saying jokingly that a lot of their weapons are out of commission and the boys are promised they'll bring a few Israeli weapons. For them it's an occasion to replenish [their] military weapons. The Azerbaijanis have enviable weapons, but they can't use them — during sabotage attacks they leave those weapons and go."
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