Armenian battalion commander accused of fleeing from battlefield
A former battalion commander of the Armenian Armed Forces was accused of fleeing during combat during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. This was reported by the press service of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic.
According to the agency, the accused, being at the height of Khurat near Hadrut, allegedly did not fulfil the duties of a soldier on October 10 and fled from his positions, leaving his subordinates. Many soldiers from his battalion died, were injured, or went missing.
It is reported that the officer has been charged under several articles. The criminal case was brought to court.
It is worth noting that earlier in Armenia, a colonel was charged with dereliction of duty, who during the war with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh served as commander of the defensive region.
Earlier, five of the ten former POWs have been accused of "violating the norms of service." The Armenian Investigative Committee has filed a request to detain them.
A judge has already authorised the detention of one soldier, while a petition to detain a second soldier has been denied.
The former POWs were apparently kidnapped during fighting on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border on November 16.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan threw doubt on the troops' detention a day after the battles, saying the government "does not comprehend" how they ended up in captivity.
On December 7, a video surfaced in which Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan condemned "deserters" and claimed that Armenian POWs 'no longer exist' for him.
Moreover, in February 2022, the Armenian National Security Service (NSS) declared that a spy network operating in the nation has been uncovered and eliminated. Hundreds of Armenian military are said to have been engaged. 19 individuals have already been arrested, with some of them confessing.
The network, according to the NSS, was developed by foreign intelligence services. One of the police officers stressed in his statement, which was published by the department's press staff, that he met "with employees of the special services of Azerbaijan" on Facebook.
The spies pretended to be Armenian women on social media and recruited their targets by convincing them that their online friends would engage in "intimate interactions."