22:34, 5 November, 2020
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 5, ARMENPRESS. Representative of the MoD Armenia Artsrun Hovhannisyan presented details on the goals of the Azerbaijani subversive groups and the neutralization operations of the Defense Army of Artsakh. ARMENPRESS reports in an interview with ''Interview'' program on Public TV Artsrun Hovhannisyan underlined that he has noticed that Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev presents the subversive groups as Azerbaijani army attacking Shushi.
''He feeds his public with such news, also the international community listens to that. But I am surprised and don't know such a tactic of war. So what does it mean? How do they attack us if we search them, find for example a group f 15-20, kill some of them, the others escape? They run away in another direction, go to forests, bypass some places and emerge from some other places, trying to find weaker points, enter villages, damage them, hang flags and take photos. Then our soldiers again find them, again fire, they again run away, suffering some losses'', Hovhannisyan said.
According to him, the so-called attack of the Azerbaijani subversive groups in the direction of Shushi was not a success. Hovhannisyan said that on November 5 the Azerbaijanis tried to crawl the rocks of Shushi all day long, trying to enter the city. ‘’The crawlers were small groups of 5-10, maximum 20. Armenian soldiers killed them, then approached and saw that all of them had flags with them. It’s clear that they are trying to make some symbolic success, to shoot a video of someone of them entering the city and raising the flag. November 9 is the day of flag in Azerbaijan and now they are trying to do something, show that they took it, but they are unable to do that’’, Hovhannisyan said.
Artsrun Hovhannisyan said the Azerbaijani side could have benefitted from this situation if they had been able to break in the front line from Martuni direction. ''They tried to do it during the last 3-4 days trying to take control of the entire road. In that case their subversive groups would be able to survive, they would escape the fate of being killed in small groups. But they failed and their small subversive groups continue to be eliminated'', Hovhannisyan said.
Referring to the situation in Berdzor, Hovhannisyan asured that everything is normal in the city, people live their normal life. But he added that there are groups in the direction of Lisagor village on the way to Shushi, which fled to the forests following the November 4 operation. ''Today we found some of them, fired from mortars, artillery and cleaning groups hunted them, killed some of them, others again fled’’, he said.
According to Artsrun Hovhannisyan, at the moment a non-conventional war is going on, during which the Azerbaijani side uses subversive groups, mercenaries and a conventional war at the same time, using armored military equipment, artillery, aviation and so on.
Referring to the priority task for the Defense Army of Artsakh, Hovhannisyan emphasized that their priority task is to preserve the favorable positions and during that process find and neutralize the subversive groups.