Interview of the Security Council Secretary on "Factor.am.”

03 / 07 / 2020

The Secretary of the Security Council Mr. Armen Grigoryan spoke on Factor.am about the final work activities on the development of the new National Security Strategy, the main principles and directions of the document and a number of issues on the agenda.

"The Strategy is the result of large-scale work over the past year, and I can say that in terms of engagement as well: not only the National Assembly and the executive, but also civil society representatives and experts were included. Besides, we have tried to include specialists from the Diaspora in the working group to create a comprehensive document. One of the advantages of the document is that the formation process was participatory. There are some emphases that I think are one of the pillars of the Strategy: the national interest, the sovereignty of Armenia, the democratic governance of Armenia, as well as the resilience of the governing system of Armenia. In the past, security was perceived as a military component, but currently security cannot be perceived as military alone. There are other components that affect the military one. And the emphasis is that. If there is a war, the whole system of government must be able to withstand the state of war and emergency, the rest of the structures must be able to support the Ministry of Defence by contributing to its defence activities. The Strategy has successfully tried to give ways on how our security will be higher, "said the Secretary of the Security Council Mr. Armen Grigoryan on the new National Security Strategy final work activities.

Referring to the April war and the exclusion of the recurrence of large-scale military operations, Mr. Armen Grigoryan said, "Definitely, the best option is to have a strong army, economy and effective management, to have such armament and intelligence that will exclude any step taken by Azerbaijan. The April war has shown that at any moment Azerbaijan can take steps to resolve the Karabakh conflict by force, and one of our main lessons is to never let Azerbaijan take such steps. We have taken into account the April lessons that we have learned, and have set an issue in the Strategy not to repeat such a thing ever."

Speaking about domestic political developments and some speculations, the Secretary of the Security Council noted that, "Even in April 2018, these issues were raised within the framework of the logic of the revolution, that the revolution taking place in Armenia will damage the Armenian-Russian relations. Experience has shown that the Armenian-Russian relations found their best manifestation in 2018 and 2019. Armenian-Russian strategic and allied relations are at a high level, and there are no issues that cannot be discussed. These people are trying to present themselves to the public in another light. These forces, of course, will try to get out of line, and it is very surprising to me that these forces do not position themselves as the forces of sovereign Armenia, but have a completely different logic. This is my only concern that these forces do not manifest themselves as the forces of sovereign Armenia, which have nothing to do with the latter, and that is why they are on the margins of history. ”

The full video is below