One Year after the Gyumri Massacre

On this very day in 2015, at about 7 am, the tanker of the Russian military base located in Gyumri shot and stabbed the 7 members of the Avetisyan family. This incident and the further events revealed numerous circumstances.

Let us try to restore what happened and summarize the conclusions we came to during this period.

Chronology of the Events

So, in spite of problems with mental health, Valeri Permyakov from Chita region of the Russian Federation was conscripted to the army in 2014. He started his service in the RF 21250 military unit. After escaping from that unit, he was transferred to the psychiatric ward of the military hospital.

Moreover, as it turned out later, Valeri Permyakov is also a Satanist. It also turned out that in February 2013, he had signed an “agreement with the devil” according to which he was obliged to “pass on a few men and a few women” to the latter.

However, after staying in the military psychiatric hospital for a long time, he was not demobilized. Instead, as a covert punishment, he was detached to 102^nd Russian base in Armenia, where he reached on December 3, 2014.

On January 12, 2015, at 2 am, Permyakov successfully began the guard duty but by 2:30 am he had already left the guard duty. For more than 4 hours, the soldier was strolling along the streets of Gyumri in his uniform and AK-74 rifle. And then, entering the Avetisyans’ house, he shot to death 5 out of 7 members of the family and stabbed 2 of them (the children) with a Kalashnikov bayonet knife. Six of the victims died on the spot, and the six-month old child died in hospital a few days later.

Three hours later (at 10:05 am), when there was already information about the murder committed by a Russian soldier, the 102^nd base command informed the RA Police about an armed deserter. And thus, search for Permyakov started across the country. Even Russian soldiers participated in search operations. Moreover, they were armed with rifles.

In the meantime, Permyakov passed round the policemen controlling Gyumri-Armavir road and reached Bayandur village in Shirak region, where he was caught by Russian Border guards at 00:15am, January 13. Russian border guards do not pass Permyakov to the RA Police, and instead they take him to the Russian 102^nd Base. He is there up to now even though Avetisyans’ murder part of his criminal case has been transferred to the RA law enforcement bodies.

Conclusion: Unenforceable Contracts

On January 13, it already became clear that the Russian side does not intend to pass Permyakov to the Armenian side. The latter revealed the fact that in fact, numerous Russian-Armenian agreements do not actually work.

The point is that during the process of armed search for Permyakov, his arrest and failure to pass him to the Armenian side, as well as failure to inform about his escape in time, the Russian side violated about 10 provisions of 4 Russian-Armenian agreements.

Moreover, as it has been mentioned, in spite of the 1997 Russian-Armenian agreement, the 102^nd Russian base command did not inform the RA Police about the armed deserter in time. If they had done so, the RA law enforcement bodies may have been able to arrest Permyakov who was “strolling” along the streets of Gyumri and had not committed the massacre yet.

As a result, it became clear for the public that the Russian forces do not really care about not violating points of Russian-Armenian interstate agreements.

The violations of the agreements and their possible consequences are described in more detail in the video prepared by Union of Informed Citizens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=14&v=Dvnly8ALo5k

Conclusions: The Military Base

On the day of the incident, while Permyakov had not even been arrested, many people remembered the events of 1999, when two servicemen of the 102^nd Russian military base entered the Gyumri market and opened fire on passers-by, killing 2 citizens. People also remembered the incident of death of two children from Vahramaberd village on April 7, 2013. Moreover, in case of the first incident, the accused got 14-15 year-long sentences, while the guilty for the incident in Vahramaberd polygon were “never found”.

As it was revealed during this period, the Russian Ministry of Defense has an “unwritten regulation” of exiling law-breaking soldiers to 102^nd base in Armenia and 201^st base in Tajikistan. They sand deserters, alcoholics, drug addicts and the mentally ill to the aforementioned bases so that they have “nowhere to run”. And it is this factor that accounts for the abundancy of incidents connected with Russian soldiers in these two countries.

Another video prepared by Union of Informed Citizens tells about “the bloody trace” of the 102^nd Russian military base in Armenia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6fyBM6KjOs

Though it is already clear that Permyakov will be sentenced to life imprisonment, not a single officer has born any responsibility for the violations of Russian-Armenian agreements (though these very violations made the crime possible). Moreover, Andrey Ruzinski, who was then commander of 102^nd military base, was promoted. Currently he leads a huge military force in “Lugansk People’s Republic” which is in war with Ukraine. According to some reports, he will soon assume the position of the Chief of Staff of the Second Army Corps.

But even before the transfer of colonel Ruzinski to Russian-Ukrainian conflict frontline, the public remembered the example of the Russian naval base in Ukraine when considering the sense of the 102^nd Russian military base in Armenia. The point is that according to the Budapest agreement signed in 1994, Russia undertook to guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity. But it were exactly the Russian soldiers and the Russian naval base that raised arms against Ukraine and violated the territorial integrity of that country.

Daniel Ioannisyan
“Union of Infomed Citizens”