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    Categories: 2023

RFE/RL Armenian Service – 11/06/2023

                                        Monday, November 6, 2023


Armenian Government Vows To Pay Karabakh Pensions

        • Robert Zargarian
        • Susan Badalian

Armenia - A refugee from Karabakh shows his Armenian passport during a protest 
outside the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Yerevan, November 6, 2023.


In an apparent about-face, the Armenian government has assured refugees from 
Nagorno-Karabakh that it will pay pensions and other benefits received by them 
until their exodus to Armenia.

The government was reluctant to do so until now, saying that all refugees will 
only receive 50,000 drams ($125) each in November and December in addition to 
100,000 drams given to them in October.

Some senior officials indicated that Karabakh pensioners, retired military and 
security personnel as well as other relevant categories will be eligible for 
monthly benefits only if they apply for and receive Armenian citizenship. 
Armenian opposition figures and other critics condemned that stance.

The government sparked another controversy last month when it decided to grant 
the Karabakh Armenians “temporary protection” formalizing their status of 
refugees. It thus made clear that it does not consider them citizens of Armenia 
despite the fact that virtually all of them hold Armenian passports. Government 
officials described their passports as mere “travel documents,” a claim disputed 
by some legal experts.

Over a hundred refugees, many of them retired soldiers and officers, protested 
outside the Armenian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs on Monday. Deputy 
Labor Minister Davit Khachatrian received their representatives.

“He assured us that everyone will get their pensions,” one of them, Armen 
Petrosian, said after the meeting. “Civilian pensioners will get them [for the 
period starting] from October 26, while the military personnel after changes are 
made to the law.”

“He also said that an [official] announcement will be made on Thursday,” added 
Petrosian.

Khachatrian made this clear when he spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service over the 
weekend.

“We are doing everything to make sure that [the refugees] start getting their 
pensions along with everybody else at the beginning of December,” said the 
official.




Kocharian’s Son Freed After Taking Up Parliament Seat

        • Anush Mkrtchian

Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian's son Levon, February 18, 2020.


Former President Robert Kocharian’s younger son arrested during recent 
anti-government protests in Yerevan was released from custody on Monday after 
taking up a vacant parliament seat reserved for the main opposition Hayastan 
alliance.

Levon Kocharian was dragged away by riot police on September 22 as thousands of 
protesters demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation following the 
Azerbaijani military offensive that restored Baku’s control over 
Nagorno-Karabakh and forced its ethnic Armenian residents to flee to Armenia.

He is among the more than four dozen Armenians accused of assaulting police 
officers or throwing various objects at them during the largely peaceful 
demonstrations. Most of them remain in custody, facing what they and the 
Armenian opposition call politically motivated charges.

Kocharian Jr. also strongly denies the accusations leveled against him. He 
maintains that he himself was beaten up by several officers inside a police car. 
Although their violent actions were caught on camera, Armenian courts have 
refused to free him pending investigation.

Hayastan, which is headed by Robert Kocharian, appears to have decided to secure 
Levon’s release by bringing him to the parliament and giving him immunity from 
prosecution. Like his father, he was on its list of candidates in the 2021 
general elections.

Armen Charchian, a parliament deputy representing the opposition bloc, resigned 
from the National Assembly late last month. Three other Hayastan members who 
were next in line to succeed Charchian refused to take up his seat, giving 
different reasons. They thus cleared the way for the ex-president’s son.

With Armenian law stipulating that a parliamentarian cannot be charged and 
arrested without the parliament’s consent, investigators had no choice but to 
free him for now. The Office of the Prosecutor-General declined to clarify 
whether it will request such permission.

Levon Kocharian insisted that the criminal case against him is “nonsense” when 
he spoke to journalists outside Yerevan’s Nubarashen prison. He called for the 
immediate release of the other protesters regarded by Hayastan and some human 
rights activists as political prisoners.

“I am one of them and hope that they too will be free soon,” he said.

Four of them, including a 16-year-old boy, were arrested just over a week ago. 
They all are natives of Karabakh who took refuge in Armenia following the 2020 
war.




Pro-Western Group Denies Role In Armenian ‘Coup Plot’

        • Naira Bulghadarian

Armenia - Zhirayr Sefilian speaks during a rally in Yerevan, February 26, 2021


A political group increasingly critical of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on 
Monday strongly denied any involvement in what Armenian authorities call a 
botched conspiracy to seize government buildings and “disrupt the work of 
government bodies.”

Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) announced last week the arrests of 
five persons accused of hatching the alleged plot. It said that they planned to 
set off an explosion and assassinate an unnamed “civilian” but gave no other 
details.

The NSS claimed to have found and confiscated not only weapons and ammunition 
but also handwritten texts detailing the planned “terrorist attacks.” A 
purported screenshot of one such document released by it calls for attracting 
members of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a pro-Western fringe group 
led by Zhirayr Sefilian, a prominent nationalist figure. He was questioned as a 
“witness” in the case on Monday.

“The investigator’s questions were mainly about whether the NDA can be connected 
with such a thing,” Sefilian told a news conference later in the day. He said 
any he denied any involvement.

Sefilian said that he knows personally two of the arrested men. But he refused 
to identify them, saying only that they are not affiliated with the NDU despite 
having had recent “contacts” with the group over its declared attempts to oust 
Pashinian. Sefilian also questioned the credibility of the accusations brought 
against them.

“The National Democratic Alliance declares that it has nothing to do with the 
‘newly discovered terrorists,’” read a separate statement released by the group.

The statement claimed that Pashinian’s government is deliberately “casting a 
shadow of suspicion on the NDA” in a bid to prevent it from challenging another 
“capitulation treaty with Azerbaijan” planned by him. It also said that despite 
getting Armenia “out of Russian control” Pashinian is not bringing the country 
closer to the West.

“The NDA will continue its public political struggle against Nikol’s defeatism, 
including but not limited to all legal forms of civil disobedience, direct 
democracy and peaceful insurrection,” concluded the statement.

Sefilian and other NDA figures have close ties to the jailed leaders of an armed 
group that stormed an Armenian police base in 2016 to demand that then President 
Serzh Sarkisian release Sefilian from jail and step down.

The three dozen gunmen, who took police officers and medical personnel hostage, 
laid down their weapons after a two-week standoff with security forces which 
left three police officers dead. All but two of them were released from custody 
shortly after Sarkisian was toppled in the 2018 “velvet revolution” led by 
Pashinian. The seven key members of the group called Sasna Tsrer were sent back 
to jail in May 2022.




Armenian Army Chief Tours U.S. Military Facilities In Europe


Germany - Steven Basham (R), deputy head of U.S. European Command (EUCOM), meets 
Armenian army chief Eduard Asrian in Stuttgart, November 3, 2023. (Photo by 
EUCOM)


Armenia’s top general has visited the U.S. military headquarters and two 
training centers in Europe, underscoring Yerevan’s efforts to deepen defense 
ties with the United States resented by Russia.

Lieutenant-General Eduard Asrian, the chief of the Armenian army’s General 
Staff, met with Lieutenant General Steven Basham, the deputy head of U.S. 
European Command (EUCOM), at the EUCOM headquarters in the German city of 
Stuttgart on Friday. They discussed “Armenia’s security environment, defense 
reforms and the defense cooperation with the United States,” read an EUCOM 
statement released afterwards.

“This was a milestone event as we deliberately and incrementally develop our 
defense relationship,” it quoted Basham as saying.

“The Armenian armed forces are currently undergoing significant reforms and 
transformation and we are interested in receiving support and learning about the 
best practices from our partners, and especially the United States.” Asrian said 
for his part.

According to the Armenian Defense Ministry, Basham expressed the U.S.’s 
readiness to help the South Caucasus nation “professionalize” its armed forces, 
modernize their command-and-control structures and train military personnel on a 
larger scale. There was no word on potential U.S. arms supplies.

Asrian visited the U.S. military’s Joint Multinational Readiness Center and 
Non-Commissioned Officer Academy in Germany before his talks with Basham.

Armenia - U.S. and Armenian troops start a joint exercise at the Zar training 
ground near Yerevan, September 11, 2023.

His trip came less than two months after Armenia hosted a U.S.-Armenian military 
exercise criticized by Russia as well as neighboring Iran. Asrian and Armenian 
Defense Minister Suren Papikian watched the exercise together with two U.S. 
generals.

The drills added to the Armenian government’s unprecedented tensions with 
Moscow, its longtime ally. The Russian Foreign Ministry listed them Yerevan’s 
“unfriendly” actions in a note of protest handed to the Armenian ambassador in 
Moscow on September 8.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian insisted late last month that his government is 
determined to “diversify” Armenia’s foreign and security policies because the 
Russians have failed to honor their security commitments to his country. But he 
again made clear that it is not considering demanding the withdrawal of Russian 
troops from Armenia even if it sees no “advantages” in their presence.



Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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