Monday,
Armenian Side ‘Also Responsible’ For Russian Drill Scare
• Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Armenia - Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan speaks to reporters in Panik village,
.
Armenian officials are also to blame for a Russian military exercise that
scared residents of a village in the northwestern Shirak province, Defense
Minister Davit Tonoyan said on Sunday.
His remarks contrasted with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s furious reaction
to the July 17 exercise held by Russian troops in and around the village of
Panik. The sound of gunfire and explosions terrified many local residents, who
were not notified about the drill beforehand.
Pashinian condemned the incident as a “provocation against Armenia’s
sovereignty” when he spoke at a July 19 cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
Tonoyan sounded more cautious during a weekend visit to Panik where he met with
local government officials and the commander of a Russian military base
stationed in Armenia, Colonel Vladimir Yelkanov. He spoke of “mistakes
committed by both the Russian side and the Armenian side.”
“I officially declare that one day before [the exercise] the Russian side
informed [Armenian officials] about the movement of a military column and said
that there will be a training exercise without specifying the site of the
training,” Tonoyan told reporters after the meeting. “From the legal
standpoint, it had to coordinate.”
“But they have admitted their mistake and officially apologized and we have
already drawn conclusions, as a result of which there will be greater
coordination,” he said.
The minister added that not only the Russians but also the Armenian side is
investigating the incident. “As regards the Armenian side, internal inquiries
are being conducted in our agencies with the aim of identifying the guilty,” he
said without going into details.
Panik is located close to one of the two shooting grounds used by the Russian
base headquartered in Gyumri, the administrative center of Shirak.
The base has up to 5,000 soldiers mainly deployed along Armenia’s closed border
with Turkey as well as tanks, armored vehicles, artillery systems and MiG-29
fighter jets. Moscow has bolstered the base with helicopter gunships and other
military hardware since a 2010 Russian-Armenian agreement extended its basing
rights in Armenia to 2044.
Successive Armenian governments have regarded the Russian military presence in
Armenia as a key element of the country’s national security strategy.
Arrested Sarkisian Bodyguard In No Rush To Post Bail
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - Vachagan Ghazarian (R), President Serzh Sarkisian's chief bodyguard,
is pictured at an official event in Yerevan, 11 July 2015.
Former President Serzh Sarkisian’s former chief bodyguard prosecuted on
corruption charges remained in custody on Monday because of failing to post a 1
billion-dram ($2.1 million) bail set by Armenia’s Court of Appeals.
The court granted Vache Ghazarian bail on Friday in a ruling on his appeal
against a lower court’s June 28 decision to sanction his pre-trial arrest.
A spokeswoman for the Special Investigative Service (SIS) told RFE/RL’s
Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) that Ghazarian did not make the hefty payment
as of Monday afternoon. He has therefore not been set free yet, said the
official, Marina Ohanjanian.
Ghazarian’s lawyer, Armen Harutiunian, confirmed the information. He said he
does not know when his client will pay the sum.
Ghazarian, who headed Sarkisian’s security detail for more than two decades,
stands accused of illegally enriching himself and failing to disclose his
assets to a state anti-corruption body.He was detained on June 25 five days
after police raided his apartment in Yerevan and found $1.1 million and 230,000
euros ($267,000) in cash there. He allegedly carried a further $120,000 and 436
million drams ($900,000) in a bag when he was caught outside a commercial bank
in Yerevan.
In a June 25 statement, the National Security Service (NSS) said Ghazarian was
also planning to withdraw 1.5 billion drams ($3.1 million) kept by him and his
wife at another Armenian bank. He claimed that he “forgot” to add these sums to
his official income declarations, according to the statement.
Such declarations are mandatory for Armenia’s high-ranking state officials and
their close relatives. Ghazarian was such an official until being sacked in
late May as first deputy head of a security agency providing bodyguards to the
country’s leaders.
Putin, Pashinian Discuss Eurasian Union
Russia - President Vladimir Putin meets with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian in Moscow, 13 June 2018.
Russian President Vladimir Putin telephoned Armenian Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian on Monday to discuss close ties between their countries and the
future of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).
Putin also had separate phone calls earlier in the day with the presidents of
Kazakhstan and Belarus, two other members of the Russian-led trade bloc.
In a short statement, the Kremlin said Putin and Pashinian touched upon “issues
pertaining to the Eurasian Economic Union and bilateral cooperation.” It did
not elaborate.
Pashinian’s press office likewise said that they “exchanged thoughts on further
development of integration processes in the EEU framework.”
The two men most recently held talks in Moscow on June 13. In his opening
remarks at that meeting, Putin pointed to rapidly growing Armenian exports to
Russia. He attributed that to Armenia’s membership in the EEU.
Pashinian has opposed that membership in the past. However, he made clear that
he will not pull his country out of the EEU or the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) after sweeping to power in a wave of mass protests in May.
According to the official Armenian readout of the phone call, Pashinian and
Putin also discussed “a number of issues on the agenda of Russian-Armenian
allied relations.” No details were reported.
Last Thursday, Pashinian strongly criticized Russian troops stationed in
Armenia for holding an exercise in an Armenian village that caused panic among
local residents. Speaking at a news conference the following day, the premier
said Yerevan expects Moscow to prevent Azerbaijan from starting another war in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenian Defense Chief Warns Baku
Armenia - Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan (R) visits an Armenian army post on
the border with Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan exclave, 21 July 2018.
Armenia will strike back harder if Azerbaijan again launches offensive military
operations in Nagorno-Karabakh, Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan said in an
interview published on Sunday.
Speaking to the Russian publication EADaily.com , Tonoyan warned Baku against a
repeat of the April 2016 “aggression” against Karabakh which nearly degenerated
into an all-out Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
He said the Armenian military has “drawn conclusions” from the four-day
hostilities that left at least 190 soldiers from both sides dead. Those include
unspecified measures that have “excluded the element of surprise” another
Azerbaijani might have, he said.
“I don’t want you to be left with the impression that Armenia is a solicitor of
peace,” said Tonoyan. “I would advise the Azerbaijani side not to be so
confident that it controls the issue of escalation of the military situation.
It’s not that mediators will manage to convince the Armenian side to suspend
retaliatory punitive actions if the Azerbaijani side resumes hostilities, even
if Baku conducts a military operation of limited scale.”
“In case of a repeat of the scenario of the April 2016 aggression, the Armenian
side may not resist the ‘temptation’ of using its entire arsenal to counter the
enemy in a resolute and large-scale way … Azerbaijan would not be allowed to
retain a monopoly on determining the place, time and scale of escalating the
situation,” he warned.
President Ilham Aliyev and other Azerbaijani leaders regularly threaten a
military solution to the Karabakh conflict. Senior military officials in
Yerevan and Stepanakert say that the Azerbaijani military has deployed more
troops along the “line of contact” around Karabakh since April.
“The war is not over. Only its first phase has ended,” Aliyev said during a
military parade in Baku on June 26. He threatened military strikes against
“strategic” Armenian targets.
During the parade the Azerbaijani army demonstrated 240 pieces of military
equipment, including Belarusian-made Polonez and Israeli-made LORA missiles
which were reportedly purchased by Baku in recent months.
While admitting that Yerevan is “worried” about weapons demonstrated during the
parade, Tonoyan stressed: “There are means of countering any type of weapon and
the Armenian side not sitting idly by.”
Press Review
(Saturday, July 21)
“Zhamanak” welcomes Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s claim that Russia can
prevent a war in Nagorno-Karabakh because it has strong leverage against
Azerbaijan. “Thus Nikol Pashinian placed responsibility for Azerbaijan’s
actions on Russia,” comments the paper. It says Pashinian is sending
“complementary tough messages to Brussels and Moscow,” speculating that he
wants the Russians to appreciate his criticism of the European Union with
concrete gestures on the security front. “These complementary messages are
undoubtedly based on the legitimacy of his government,” it says.
“Hraparak” says that Armenia has grown very dependent on Russia because of
grave security challenges facing it. The paper says the new Armenian government
needs to address this problem.
“Aravot” says that deputy parliament speaker Arpine Hovannisian was wrong to
seemingly insult Daniel Ioannisian, a member of a government working group
dealing with electoral reform, during a recent discussion in the Armenian
parliament. “That is certainly condemnable,” writes the paper. “It’s wrong to
insult anyone, be it a deputy, a worker, an entrepreneur or an unemployed
person. But let’s look at a diametrically opposite scenario and assume that
Daniel Ioannisian or another Pashinian ally branded an HHK member as ‘mentally
retarded.’ How would Facebook Armenians react to that?” The paper believes that
they would hail such insults. Nor would the country’s leading civic groups
issue a joint statement condemning them, it says.
Meanwhile, Davit Harutiunian, a senior member of the former ruling HHK, tells
“Hayots Ashkhar” that despite their lingering differences the government and
the parliamentary forces now agree on “many conceptual issues” relating to
electoral reform.
(Tigran Avetisian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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