Civilnet
A surprise Russian military combat readiness check involving the Federation’s Southern Military District got underway during the early hours of Monday, this also involved the Russian Military base in Armenia's Gyumri, along the Armenian border with Turkey, where the number 102 base was brought to high combat readiness.
The checks are to assess the readiness of the southern military district to respond to different crisis. Tass News agency quotes Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu as saying that the drill will also show how the aviation and air defense forces are ready to counter the strikes of the enemy and protect important military and state facilities.
During a meeting with students and staff of Yerevan State University, Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan said, “Such military checks are necessary to maintain the combat readiness of any army but they naturally also have a political connotation”.
The Armenian Defense Minister also mentioned that if need be, “Armenia is ready to assist the Russian Southern Military District Air Defense”.
The Russian combat readiness checks, which coincided with an Armenian military drill at the 5th military contingent, have come a day before Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov estimated Russian-Turkish relations to be “at their record-low over the past decades, with no possibility of normalizing in the near future”.
Speaking of Turkish allegations of a Russian occupation of Syria and the downing of a Russian military airplane by a Turkish heat-seeking missile, Peskov said that Russia is not to blame for regressing relations between the two countries.
"Turkey has not yet properly qualified these actions or presented the corresponding apologies. For this reason there is no chance to consider some likely ways of normalizing relations", Tass reports Peskov as saying.
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