Azernews.Az

By Akbar Mammadov

Azerbaijani Defence Ministry has said that there is no military base of any foreign country in Azerbaijan in a statement that came in response to the biased article published recently in Russian media.

“As the Ministry of Defense, we officially state that there is no foreign military base or any other illegal armed group in the territory of Azerbaijan. The professionalism and combat experience of the personnel of the Azerbaijani Army, the military equipment and weapons in the armament are enough to fulfill any combat mission in a short period of time to liberate our Armenian-occupied lands and restore our country’s territorial integrity,” the ministry said in a statement published in its official Facebook page on September 2.

The ministry emphasized that this combat readiness was demonstrated by the Azerbaijani Army in the battles of April 2016, in 2018 in Nakhchivan and in 2020 in the direction of Tovuz.

Commenting on the "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" article dated 1 September, the Defense Ministry noted that the baseless allegations in the article, especially those about bringing fighters from Syria to Azerbaijan for an alleged blitzkrieg against Armenia, are clearly disinformation and in no way reflect the truth.

“It is clear that the article is commissioned, the writings are deliberate and defamatory,” the ministry said.

Furthermore, the ministry pointed out that Yerevan, which is interested in spreading such disinformation, seeks to create favorable conditions for the escalation of the conflict in the region and to involve more parties to the conflict.

The ministry suggested that “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” must instead focus on the creation of nationwide militia in Armenia.

“This Law [on Defence] allows arming even elderly people under the age of 70 by forcing Armenia, which is facing the problem of mobilization, to create a system of forming armed groups on a voluntary basis.”

The ministry noted that after the law comes into force, Armenia will legalize the recruitment of its army with mercenaries and terrorists from the hotspots of the Middle East, especially Syria and Lebanon, under the guise of volunteering.

The ministry said that the author Vladimir Mukhin has failed to cite any reliable source or provided any solid fact in the article and deceives the readers by following the principle that “the more lies and the more ugly they are, the more convincing they are”

“We categorically reject the untrue allegations in the article that there is a Turkish military base in Nakhchivan reinforced by fighter jets and that about 500 Syrian fighters of Turkmen origin have been brought to Azerbaijan.”

It should be noted that Armenia has the 102nd Russian military base in its Gumru city.

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Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

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