Conscription continues to be one of the challenges of RA. the child is denied citizenship so that he does not serve in the army. Suren Papikyan (Video)

664 billion 653 million 454 thousand drams will be allocated to the RA Ministry of Defense from the 2025 state budget, Minister of Defense Suren Papikyan announced this in the National Assembly.

"The temptation is great to make a comparison between the defense budgets of previous years and 2025, but I will not enter that field now, I will ask you to follow the indicators yourself and make judgments," he said.

According to the minister, in order to define the main guidelines for the implementation of radical reforms in the RA Armed Forces, the "Army Transformation Concept" was developed and approved by the decision of the Security Council.

The concept consists of the following sections: transition to a professional army, here we are also talking about the professional sergeant system, improvement of the organizational and staff structure of the Armed Forces, which implies a program to improve the salaries of officers and contract servicemen, etc.

Suren Papikyan said that the policy of equipping the RA armed forces with educated and knowledgeable personnel remains key.

According to the Minister of Defense, mandatory military service will continue to exist in Armenia, which will be a resource to replenish the ranks of the professional army.

"It is important for us that the servicemen of the professional army receive a normal salary, it is an absolute lie that we do not raise the salary, the salary has been increased, I should say more: the certified servicemen receive a bonus from 123 thousand to 470 thousand drams," Papikyan said. :

He noted that it is important that female representatives become members of the Armed Forces as professional soldiers.

Regarding the conscription, the Minister of Defense said that conscription continues to be one of the challenges facing Armenia.

“We need to talk about this out loud. There is a phenomenon when an RA citizen renounces his child's RA citizenship so that he does not serve in the Armed Forces. I think we need to do some lustration to those around us. I appealed to the Prime Minister to start a similar process in the state administration system. In my opinion, a public official should not allow himself that not only his child, but also the children of his relatives and relatives renounce their RA citizenship," said Suren Papikyan.

He mentioned that this phenomenon can bring painful indicators.

"But we have to face ourselves on a moral basis and finally fight against this bad trend. This phenomenon is not new, I don't know how many years of history and depth it has, but this is a phenomenon that must be fought against," he said.