Tuesday,
Pashinian Ally Slams Karabakh Leader
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Nagorno-Karabakh - Ruben Vardanyan meets with residents of Stepanakert, January
24, 2023.
Echoing Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s demands, a senior Armenian
pro-government lawmaker said on Tuesday that Ruben Vardanyan, the
Nagorno-Karabakh premier, was “sent” to Stepanakert by Russia and must resign.
Gagik Melkonian claimed that Vardanyan’s exit will be announced by Thursday. He
said it will help to end Azerbaijan’s two-month blockade of the Lachin corridor
and a rift within Karabakh’s leadership.
“Ask him, ‘Who sent you to Karabakh and why? Why did you cause a split within
the Karabakh authorities?’ Of course, the Russians sent him. Who else could send
him?” said the lawmaker representing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil
Contract party.
He said that Vardanyan must go even if that means the Armenian side has bowed to
pressure from Azerbaijan.
Aliyev again demanded Vardanyan’s ouster when he spoke during the Munich
Security Conference at the weekend. He branded the Armenian-born businessman a
“criminal oligarch” who was “smuggled” to Karabakh from Russia.
Vardanyan was appointed as state minister, the second-highest post in Karabakh’s
leadership, in November two months after renouncing his Russian citizenship.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted in December that Moscow “has
nothing to do” with the appointment condemned by Baku.
Armenia -- Gagik Melkonian speaks to RFE/RL, February 8, 2019.
Like Azerbaijani officials, Melkonian accused Vardanyan of acting on Russia’s
orders. Those, he claimed, included “driving a wedge between Armenia and
Karabakh.”
Last month, Pashinian urged the authorities in Stepanakert to tone down their
rhetoric and negotiate with Baku in order to get the latter to unblock the sole
road connecting Karabakh to Armenia. Earlier in January, Karabakh’s government
and main political factions criticized Pashinian’s statements on the conflict
with Azerbaijan, saying that they undermine the Karabakh Armenians’ right to
self-determination.
Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, is due to deliver a video address to
the population on Thursday. A Karabakh opposition activist, Tigran Petrosian,
told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday that Harutiunian has decided to replace
Vardanyan by his chief prosecutor, Gurgen Nersisian.
Mediahub.am quoted Nersisian as saying on Tuesday that he has been offered
Vardanyan’s job but has not yet decided whether to take up the post of state
minister.
Vardanyan himself did not comment on his political future. He has made defiant
statements throughout the Azerbaijani blockade, saying that the Karabakh
Armenians will never agree to live under Azerbaijani rule despite severe
hardship endured by them.
Metakse Hakobian, an opposition member of the Karabakh legislature, voiced
support for Vardanyan and warned Harutiunian against sacking him.
Prominent Armenian General Arrested, Freed
• Artak Khulian
Armenia - Grigori Khachaturov attends an award ceremony in the presidential
palace in Yerevan, September 20, 2019.
A prominent Armenian general who demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s
resignation in 2021 was set free on Tuesday one day after being arrested on
charges strongly denied by him.
Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Court refused to allow the National Security Service
(NSS) to hold Grigori Khachaturov in detention pending investigation. He walked
free in the courtroom as a result.
Khachaturov is the former commander of the Armenian army’s Third Corps mostly
stationed in northern Tavush province bordering Azerbaijan. He received a major
military award and was promoted to the rank of major-general after leading a
successful military operation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in July 2020,
less than three months before the outbreak of the six-week war in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Khachaturov was among four dozen high-ranking military officers who accused
Pashinian’s government of incompetence and misrule and demanded its resignation
in February 2021. The unprecedented demand was welcomed by the Armenian
opposition but condemned as a coup attempt by Pashinian.
Khachaturov insisted on the prime minister’s resignation in a separate statement
issued in March 2021. He said that “every day and hour” of Pashinian’s rule
“erodes” Armenia’s national security. He was fired a few months later.
The NSS detained Khachaturov late on Monday on charges of money laundering
stemming from a controversial criminal case opened against Seyran Ohanian, a
former defense minister who now leads the parliamentary group of the main
opposition Hayastan alliance.
Ohanian was charged earlier this month with illegally privatizing in the past
two buildings in Yerevan and two other, disused properties that belonged to the
Armenian Defense Ministry. He rejects the accusations as politically motivated.
Law-enforcement authorities say that Khachaturov “de facto” acquired one of
those properties at a knockdown price and used it for obtaining a bank loan
worth 18 million drams ($45,000). The retired general’s lawyer, Hakob Yenokian,
described the money laundering charge as “laughable.”
Several opposition figures voiced support for Khachaturov as they gathered
outside the Yerevan-based court during a hearing on his pre-trial arrest sought
by the NSS. They claimed that Pashinian is trying to punish the general for his
and his close relatives’ anti-government views.
Khachaturov’s father Yuri was the chief of the Armenian army’s General Staff
from 2008-2016. He served as secretary general of the Russian-led Collective
Security Treaty Organization when the current authorities indicted him as well
as Ohanian and former President Robert Kocharian in 2018 over their alleged role
in the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. Armenia’s Constitutional Court
declared coup charges leveled against them unconstitutional in 2021.
Yuri Khachaturov and his second son actively participated in last year’s
antigovernment protests staged by the country’s main opposition forces.
Activist Decries ‘Continuing Police Torture’ In Armenia
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia - Busloads of police are seen in the center of Yerevan, December 5, 2019.
The Armenian police continue to ill-treat criminal suspects to extract
confessions or other testimony from them despite police reforms declared by the
government, a civic activist claimed on Tuesday.
A government bill enacted as part of those reforms three years ago called for
surveillance cameras to be installed inside police stations -- and their
interrogation rooms in particular -- across Armenia by 2023. This was supposed
to prevent police abuse of detainees which had long been widespread.
Only ten police stations were equipped with such cameras afterwards. They were
switched off in last July on then national police chief Vahe Ghazarian’s orders.
The police told the country’s Office of the Human Rights Defender that the
cameras are no longer needed because under another law enacted last year
suspects detained by the police must now be interrogated by another
law-enforcement body, the Investigative Committee.
Daniel Ioannisian, a civic activist monitoring the police, dismissed that
explanation. Ghazarian simply wanted to make sure that his subordinates can
continue to torture detainees, he claimed, adding that the illegal practice has
therefore continued unabated.
Ioannisian noted that as recently as on February 10 two lawyers representing a
juvenile suspect claimed to have been beaten up by officers at a police station
in Yerevan. The police denied the allegations, saying that the officers
themselves were insulted and assaulted by the lawyers.
Ghazarian, who is reputedly a childhood friend of Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian, was promoted to head
Armenia’s newly re-established Interior Ministry in January. Ioannisian’s Union
of Informed Citizens (UIC) and two other non-governmental organizations strongly
criticized the appointment and pulled out of a government body coordinating
police reforms in protest. They accused Ghazarian of systematically obstructing
those reforms.
Ghazarian has not publicly responded to the accusations so far.
Russia Reaffirms Opposition To EU Monitoring Mission In Armenia
Armenia - European Union monitors patrol Armenia's border with Azerbaijan,
.
Russia has accused the European Union of trying to squeeze it out of the South
Caucasus, reacting to the deployment of some 100 EU monitors to Armenia’s border
with Azerbaijan.
The Russian Foreign Ministry insisted that the monitoring mission, officially
launched on Monday, will not reduce the risk of fresh fighting on the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
“Unfortunately, it is not the first time we have recorded the desire of the
European Union and the West as a whole to gain a foothold in our ally Armenia by
any means,” the ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said in written comments.
“We see in these attempts a solely geopolitical background which is far from the
interests of a real normalization of relations in the Transcaucasus. Everything
is being done to squeeze Russia out of the region and weaken its historical role
as the main guarantor of security,” she charged.
Zakharova reiterated the official Russian line that Armenian-Azerbaijani
agreements brokered by Moscow during and after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh
will remain “the key factor of stability and security in the region in the
foreseeable future.”
RUSSIA -- Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova speaks during a
press conference in Moscow, July 1, 2021
Moscow already condemned the EU member states in late January just days after
they formally approved the monitoring mission requested by Armenia. Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also rebuked Yerevan for refusing a similar
mission offered by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in
November.
CSTO member Armenia has repeatedly accused the Russian-led military alliance of
failing to defend it against Azerbaijani “military aggression.”
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan praised the EU for sending the observers when
he met with the head of the monitoring mission, Markus Ritter, and another
senior EU official on Monday. Mirzoyan expressed confidence that the mission
will make an “important contribution” to regional stability and the security of
Armenian border areas.
The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, similarly tweeted that the monitors
“will contribute to human security, build confidence on the ground and support
EU efforts in the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
The EU deployment underscores growing friction between Moscow and Yerevan.
Russian-Armenian relations have soured lately also because of Azerbaijan’s
continuing blockade of Karabakh’s land link with Armenia.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly accused Russian peacekeepers of
doing little to unblock the vital road. Moscow has rejected the accusations.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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