Nikol Pashinyan reports 2400 killed soldiers

During the autumn battles in Nagorno-Karabakh, hundreds of Armenian soldiers were missed in action, and about 2400 others were recognized as deceased, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan reported. The Armenian authorities deliberately underestimate the number of losses, opposition leader Mikael Minasyan suggests.

Nikol Pashinyan has noted that some of the soldiers missed in action may be alive. The Armenian Prime Minister promised to launch professional retraining programmes for war veterans so that they could get a job and also pointed out the importance of social guarantees for the families of the victims and military personnel who became disabled, the "Arminfo" reported.

On his Facebook page, Mikael Minasyan, the former Armenian Ambassador to the Vatican, Portugal, and Malta, wrote that the total number of victims reached 4750, provided counting those missed in action as killed.

The Ministry for Public Health of Armenia declared the Mikael Minasyan's statements to be "a blatant lie," the "News-Armenia" reports.

Grant Mikaelyan, a blogger of the "Caucasian Knot", notes that the demographic losses are also huge. "This is a colossal loss, especially taking into account that those killed were almost all young guys, 18-21 years old, who had no children," the blogger wrote.