Has the number of casualties in the army decreased?
The Ministry of Defense reported that on November 13, the body of serviceman Narek Khachatur Grigoryan was found hanging.
In October of this year, Prosecutor General Anna Vardapetyan announced in the National Assembly that there had been 26 deaths in the Ministry of Defense. According to Vardapetyan’s statistics, the number of casualties has decreased compared to 2023. Out of the 26 deaths, 6 were murders, 5 were suicides, 4 were killings by the enemy, 4 were car accidents, 3 were due to illness, and 1 was due to an accident, among others.
Vardapetyan stated that there were 2,358 crimes in the Armenian Armed Forces in 2023, compared to 4,570 in 2022, showing a decrease of 48.4%.
However, Nazeli Movsesyan, a human rights advocate from the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly’s Vanadzor office, claimed that the figures provided by the Prosecutor General do not match reality. In October, she reported that there were actually 39 deaths in the Ministry of Defense, which the Ministry has not publicly disclosed.
The number of deaths in the Ministry of Defense over the past 5 years.