The Armed Forces are the No. 1 guarantee of security of Armenia and Artsakh, Prime Minister Nikol Pashnyan said at the discussion of the Defense Ministry bid for 2020 budget allocations.

The Prime Minister said an unprecedented amount of weapons has been purchased over the past 1.5 years, which, he said, “we need for peace, not war, because, unfortunately, the aggressive policy pursued by a number of countries in the region has to be counterbalanced by the Republic of Armenia.”

“This is the kind of policy we pursue in the field of defense, development of the Armed Forces, but the acquisition of arms is only part of our policy in this field. I consider it very important that serious steps have been taken to improve the conditions of service of the Armed Forces servicemen, improve their social guarantees and make them more effective. And we will continue our work in this direction as well,” the Prime Minister said.

The plans and measures for the 2020 Armed Forces were discussed during the meeting. In particular, the participants touched upon the steps to be taken in armament, infrastructure development, improvement of the quality of education in the army, activities of the Monte Melkonyan Military Training College, National Museum of the History of Armenian Ethnography and Liberation, Humanitarian Demining Center and forthcoming programs.