The Armenian Armed Forces will gradually shift into a "professional army”, and the mandatory conscription and draft service structure will significantly change, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in parliament during debates of the government program.
“It is well known that given certain nuances of Armenia’s social-economic life we are involving into [voluntary] contract military service persons who have other occupations, who serve in the military for some time in a month and deal with their other job during the rest of it. But when we say a ‘professional’ army we mean that a soldier is a soldier for 24/7, 30, 31, 28 or 29 days a month, 12 months a year. And essentially, in the strategic prospect we don’t see border protection as a soldier’s job. Border protection must be reserved to border guards, while the soldier must be in his permanent deployment location, dealing with continuous combat readiness training,” he said.
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