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The funds spent on “populist posts on Facebook” should have been used to purchase air defense systems not to end up in such a situation today, former Director of Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) Artur Vanetsyan said in an interview to the Fifth Channel on Thursday.

Vanetsyan, who currently leads the Homeland party, underlined that the country purchased Russian SU-30 fighter jets during his tenure, but he opposed the deal, with relevant reports testifying to it.

According to the ex-security chief, since May 2018, he repeatedly told Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and members of the Security Council that the Armenian army had to be ready to fight against Turkish-Azerbaijani forces in the event of a renewed war.

"Therefore, in May-June 2018, Nikol Pashinyan was aware of the real situation in our army. I don’t mean that the army was in a deplorable state. There is no such thing. But in the developing world, under the conditions of new arms emerging every month, we must be able to modernize the weapons of the army. Two and a half years were sufficient to solve that problem. We lost [the war with Azerbaijan] only because we were defenseless against air attacks. I have said this both in public and in closed discussions.

"The money spent uselessly, including on the purchase of SU-30 jets, could have been used to acquire weapons that could fully defend against airstrikes," Vanetsyan said.