MP Hayk Sargsyan said that Andranik Kocharyan, head of the National Assembly’s Defense and Security Committee, “through his ambitions” has derailed an important state project.

On April 6, the committee discussed amendments to the law “On Military Service,” a proposal often described as allowing exemptions from service through payment. The draft once again failed to receive a positive conclusion, Sputnik Armenia reports.

“To say I am disappointed would mean saying nothing. For years, documenting problems in the army, I have aimed to eliminate them and create a system where there is fairness — where children of wealthy families do not avoid service by renouncing citizenship, falsifying medical records, leaving the country, or using other pretexts, while service falls mainly on socially vulnerable groups,” Sargsyan said in a briefing.

According to him, the draft had been discussed multiple times in various formats and had also received support from Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, while Kocharyan had previously expressed a positive stance toward it.

Sargsyan stated that the bill should have been discussed last year, but was delayed due to Kocharyan’s business trip. He claimed Kocharyan opposed holding a session in his absence, leading to lost time. Later attempts to hold a session without him failed due to a lack of quorum.

After returning from the United States, Kocharyan reportedly said he was hearing about the draft for the first time and questioned how exemption from service through payment could be justified.

Sargsyan also noted that the number of citizens renouncing Armenian citizenship has significantly increased, reaching about 3,000 annually compared to 2,000 previously.

“It turns out that due to personal ambition, sympathy, or resentment, we lost an important project. If I had the chance now, I might even cry. Don’t you see that by allowing this, you are weakening your own army? Conscription is in critical condition — troop numbers have dropped from 44,000 to 14,000 over 14 years. I am saying: let’s take action,” he said.

Under Sargsyan’s proposal, citizens aged 18–32 could opt for short-term service by paying a fee: 24 million drams for one month or 18 million drams for four months. The draft also proposes setting a 15 million dram fee for renouncing Armenian citizenship before age 16 and raising the upper age limit for mandatory service to 32.