On January 25, Russian occupiers organized another show with “large-scale exercises” in Crimea, stating that “checkpoints have been set up in the Saksky district, cars are being inspected”, and allegedly “posts have been deployed in every populated area at the entrance and exit”.
Recall that earlier, the occupiers held a similar “tik-tok show” with the participation of the tragicomic “couch militia” “Bars-Krym” in the “Chernomorsky district” of peninsula.
Naturally, within the framework of the “exercises”, Crimean gauleiter Sergei Aksyonov staged active self-promotion, and among the “talking heads” of the aggressor-controlled “media”, Armen Martoyan began to promote himself as the “deputy commander of the brigade” “Bars-Krym”, with his stories about “sharpened fangs”, “week-long training” and “five-thousand troops”.
Collaborator Martoyan worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Armenia until 1999, but then “something went wrong” and until 2005 he was listed in the security service of the “Converse Bank” in Vanadzor.
In fact, in 2000, Martoyan was sentenced by the Lori District Court in Armenia to 10 years in prison for causing bodily harm and extortion. Then the Russian special services “teleported” Martoyan to Crimea, where he hid out as the director of the Simferopol restaurant “Fortuna” until 2014.
Martoyan was actively involved as a “talking head” and militant, accompanying the beginning of the Russian occupation of Crimea, as the “commander of the 4th company of the militia”, then bragging about “participation in the capture” of the Simferopol airport.
However, in fact, the airport was captured in February 2014 by the special forces of the Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, and Martoyan, nicknamed “Samvel”, later found several “competitors” for the “command of the 4th company”.
But Martoyan really participated in the beatings and capture of then Ukrainian politicians Oleg Lyashko and Alexey Goncharenko, activists Andrey Shchekun and Anatoly Kovalsky, as well as journalist Osman Pashayev. Martoyan was accused by Ukrainian journalists of involvement in the interrogation and beating of the Crimean Tatar activist Reshat Ametov, who was later found murdered.
Then Martoyan publicly threatened Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in connection with his “anti-Russian” actions, appropriated the rank of “major general” for himself, and was placed by his curators in the “apparatus” of the captured “Chernomorneftegaz” enterprise.
However, the Armenian criminal record initially somewhat limited Martanyan’s “political career” in occupied Crimea, in the context of Russian propaganda on Armenia as a whole, and in 2014, despite all requests, his Moscow curators did not “appoint” him as a “state council deputy”, but “corrected” themselves in 2019.
In 2020, Martoyan was allowed, as a “talking head”, to meet with the Kremlin dictator, and around the same time, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Azerbaijan opened a case against Martoyan under serious articles, accusing him of illegally crossing the state border of Azerbaijan in October 2020 through the territory of Armenia, discussing military operations in Stepanakert with the leadership of the local “authorities”, as well as participating in the conflict on the side of the Armenians as a mercenary.
Obviously, the current demonstrative exposure of Martoyan by the Russian special services is not only an “homage” to his patron Aksyonov, but also part of the hysteria, fanned on the peninsula against the authorities of Azerbaijan, noticed in the last month.

