Russian gunmakers on pressure from Armenia

Russian company Promtechnology's weapons produced under the brand ORSIS, which participated in the disrupted tender of Armenia's Armed Forces, have been successfully tested by Armenian troops several times, without raising any questions from local experts, the company's official representative said.

Earlier, Armenian Defense Minister David Tonoyan said that a "criminal act" related to ORSIS was discovered, the details of which will be established by the investigation. The minister also gave an affirmative answer to the question of whether there was an expert opinion that ORSIS tried to establish supplies of hunting equipment instead of military equipment.

"Speculation regarding the purpose of the products is completely baseless. Such issues are resolved by testing and meeting technical specifications with the required ones, not by references to experts whose knowledge raises questions. We note that the products offered by our company have been successfully tested in Armenia many times. The last time they were tested in December 2018, when the products proved to be effective," RIA Novosti cited the representative of the Russian company as saying.

ORSIS emphasized that the "criminal act" noted by Tonoyan was revealed upon the appeal of a lawyer representing the company's interests to Armenia's Investigation Committee. The company representative explained that they had to do this due to groundless demands to pay a bank guarantee, and added that the Armenian Ministry of Defense ignores official requests for a meeting to clarify the situation.

In August, a criminal case has been opened under the article neglect of service after the failure of the tender by the Armenian Defense Ministry for the supply of arms worth several million dollars to Armenia. The tender launched in May was won by ORSIS. But later the tendering process was cancelled without giving any reasons. Subsequently, this information was officially confirmed by the Armenian Defense Ministry.

Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade has addressed letter to David Tonoyan with a request to understand the reasons for the removal of the Russian manufacturer. The letter has been sent to the Russian MFA for transmission through diplomatic channels. The letter said that the application for ORSIS in the tender was rejected "without probable cause." Moreover, the company itself was "unmotivated included in the list of unscrupulous vendors" of the Armenian armed forces. In the letter they asked Tonoyan to settle the situation.

The editor-in-chief of the newspaper 'Journalistic Truth', Vladislav Shurigin, speaking with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza earlier, suggested that failure of the tender may be related to the corruption scheme in the Armenian military circles. "The fact that Yerevan closed the tender is their internal problem. Rather, it is a corruption problem, when someone from the Armenian Ministry of Defense took a bribe in order to disrupt this order and, apparently, push it in favor of the other side. So we are waiting for the other side to come up," he pointed out.

Editor-in-chief of 'National Defense' magazine Igor Korotchenko, in turn, stressed that the situation fits into the trend of scandalization of relations between Armenia and Russia. "This case is a local, but very unpleasant incident. And it fits into the general deterioration of Russian-Armenian relations. Armenia is very interested in Russian weapons, another thing is that its financial and economic situation does not allow buying what they would like," he pointed out.