Month: November 2023

CV NEWS FEED // The historic Armenian Christian Quarter of Jerusalem now faces an “existential territorial threat” from foreign developers seeking to build a luxury hotel over the region, according to the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

The patriarchate issued a statement last week after Jerusalem police began ordering local Armenians to evacuate the area in order for construction to begin.

“The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem is under possibly the greatest existential threat of its 16-century history,” according to the statement. “This existential territorial threat fully extends to all the Christian communities of Jerusalem.”

According to the Patriarchate, the developer, Xana Gardens Ltd. has begun its “vast destruction and removal of asphalt on the grounds of the Armenian Quarter” without proper legal permits from the municipality. 

In a letter to the developer on October 26, the Armenian Patriarchate canceled the land deal, which it described as “tainted with false representation, undue influence, and unlawful benefits.” 

The controversy began in July 2021 after the director of the Armenian Patriarchate real estate department, former priest Khachik Yeretzian, leased a large portion of the Armenian Quarter to Danny Rubenstein, a Jewish businessman from Australia and head of Xana Gardens Ltd. 

Rubenstein planned to build a luxury hotel during the 98 year period of his lease, after which the land and hotel would be returned to the Patriarchate. The land in question is approximately 8 acres, which is about 14% of Jerusalem’s Old City.

However, the patriarchate claims the lease was finalized without ratification from the Synod and the General Assembly. 

Yeretzian claims he signed the lease with the patriarchate’s full support and was being condemned “for an act that the patriarchate signed and now I am being accused.” 

On May 6, 2022, the Synod unanimously voted to defrock Yeretzian, “for his disloyalty and especially the series of frauds and deceptions he committed regarding” the lease of the Armenian Quarter. 

The Armenian Patriarchate’s statement continued:

Instead of providing a lawful response to the cancellation, the developers attempting to build on the Cow’s Garden have completely disregarded the legal posture of the Patriarchate towards this issue, and instead have elected for provocation, aggression, and other harassing, incendiary tactics including destruction of property, the hiring of heavily armed provocateurs, and other instigation.

The Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem was established in 301 AD, when Armenia officially declared itself a Christian nation. 

“We plead with the entirety of the Christian communities of Jerusalem to stand with the Armenian Patriarchate in these unprecedented times as this is another clear step taken toward the endangerment of the Christian presence in Jerusalem and the Holy Land,” the Patriarchate concluded. 

https://catholicvote.org/armenian-quarter-territorial-attack/

Iam Armenian-Italian. One morning three years ago, I woke to the news that my beloved Artsakh was under attack. I remember sucking in my breath as the words of the Italian song “Bella ciao” flooded my head: Una mattina mi son svegliato / O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao / Una mattina mi son svegliato / E ho trovato l’invasor—“One morning I woke up / Oh goodbye beautiful, goodbye beautiful, goodbye beautiful, bye, bye, bye / One morning I woke up / And I found the invader.” 

I know invaders. I lived through a war as a child growing up in Veneto. I remember the sight of soldiers with machine guns, and checkpoints. I remember food rationing. I remember “Pippo,” the solo fighter plane that could drop a bomb or tin foil, could fire at us or just fly away. I remember the whistle of a bomb as it dropped from the sky. I remember the English pilot we hid and fed, and whose parachute we transformed into shirts for us girls. And I remember the darkness of those nights of the war, when we all covered our windows with thick blackout curtains. Oh, do I remember the invasor. I am old, very old.

I was a child then, and like all children considered myself immortal. I had the luxury of seeing the horrors of the invasor from afar. This does not mean that I did not know them—that I wasn’t there when my mother risked being arrested by the Nazis, or when my father and grandfather worriedly wondered if Armenians would be traded for alliances, or when they hid Jews in their clinic.

It also does not mean that I did not know what I had to do during the war. Despite what modern parents may think, children can and need to shoulder their own responsibilities. I did. I was the eldest. I knew that my parents could not protect the littler ones if they had to watch out for me too. So every night, I made sure my shirt and skirt were properly folded, and my shoes and socks were placed where I could quickly reach them if the air-raid sirens went off. I also knew what to do during an air-raid. One night my parents forgot me while they hurried with the other children to get to the bomb shelter. With the sirens howling, I quickly dressed and made my way down the staircase. When I got to the atrium, I saw my grandfather. “Are you afraid?” he asked me. “No,” I replied. “I am not either,” he said. So we sat side by side on a bench and heard the bombs drop on the city.  

I remember the joy we all felt when the Americans arrived. With them came food (chocolate and peanut butter, most importantly), protection, smiles, and laughter. It was not just a liberation. It was a sunrise: a chance to start anew. I owe Americans my life. When I was about to die from one of those terrible diseases that all wars bring, my grandfather was able to purchase the penicillin that broke the fever that caused me to lose all of my hair. 

I watched the world begin to rebuild. There were ominous signs then, signs that I have since understood are the aftermath of our terrible modern ideological wars: a referendum that all of Italy suspected had been manipulated, the private vendettas against the collaborators and allies of the invasori, the micro–civil war in central Italy that the writer Giovannino Guareschi described so well. The war was over when Italy began its massive effort to start over. Ideological warfare was not. 

The Cold War had already broken out while Adenauer, Schuman, and De Gasperi began to lay out the plans for a united Europe. We, the children of the war, rejoiced in their plans. They meant freedom: a solid future. Such was my own hope in the united Europe that I stayed in the Europa-Haus dormitory while I studied in Göttingen, and lived alongside my Spanish, French, German, and Norwegian friends. We all wore pins with the European flag.

But the ideological battle that the war had left in its wake killed our dream before it was born. The late sixties were filled with loud, angry protests, and the seventies with terrorism. Worse than the violence was the hypocrisy of those who ignored the underlying discord, who refused to address it. And now that hypocrisy has destroyed Nagorno-Karabakh.

The war that I grew up in never really ended. It has reached my beloved Artsakh, the Artsakh in which I drank Tuti oghi (mulberry vodka) under a star-filled sky near the excavations of the old city of Tigranakert, the city founded by the great Armenian king Tigran the Great. It was handed over to Azerbaijan after the 44-Day War in 2020. And now, more recently, over 100,000 Armenians have been driven from Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan launched an attack in September. 

I saw that governments would make grand statements about morality and do nothing. I saw that they would try to take advantage of the unrest in the Caucasus in order to further their own ideological agendas. I saw that it would be the people, my people, the Armenians of Artsakh, who would suffer. 

I hope the United States, who liberated us before, will remember its extraordinary generosity. Our memories of violence stretch back millennia. Centuries and centuries of wars and invasions have made hypocrites of us. 

But America is young; it can still be a beacon, an example. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey has introduced a bill to “prevent ethnic cleansing and atrocities against ethnic Armenians.” He recognizes that this is not a matter of “two sides” who “simply have differences,” as Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesman, claimed days after innocent Armenian civilians were bombed by Azeris. I thank Rep. Smith for his support—and, more importantly, for caring about the truth, which is so often the first casualty of war.

Antonia Arslan was a professor of modern and contemporary Italian literature at the University of Padua. She is the author of the international bestseller Skylark Farm.

Amid reports of disenchantment between Russia and Armenia, the latter has allegedly decided to transfer some Soviet-era military equipment to Ukraine.

Reports published in local media have claimed that the former Soviet state, which has traditionally enjoyed strong ties with Moscow, has decided to transfer Tochka-U missile systems and some other unknown air defense systems to the Ukrainian military.

These claims could not be independently corroborated by EurAsian Times, and Russia has yet to officially respond to these reports at the time of writing this report.

According to preliminary information, Armenia could transfer three Tochka-U to the Ukrainian military. The AFU is not unfamiliar with the use of the Tochka-U missile. The AFU allegedly employed the missile against Russia since the initial days of the war in 2022. 

A modernized version of the Soviet Tochka precision tactical missile system, the Tochka-U is intended to strike specific small targets hidden deep within the enemy defense. The most modern Tochka-U model has a range of up to 75 miles (120 kilometers) and can transport several warhead types up to a weight of about 1,000 pounds or more than 450 kilograms.

The reports come after a famous Russian military blogger claimed that Ukrainian forces used a Tochka-U missile to strike Belgorod Oblast on November 19. Without offering any substantial evidence to support his claims, the blogger also said that the Armenian government has begun to prepare to withdraw from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

The CSTO is a Russia-led inter-governmental security alliance of six post-Soviet states. The other members of CSTO, formed in 2002, are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The Armenian transfer of Tochka-U to Ukraine comes at a time when all is not well between Russia-led CSTO and Armenia.

On November 20, the CSTO chief announced that Armenia has asked for the removal of the alliance’s assistance to Armenia from its agenda. “The Armenian side, although all other allies supported this decision, did not express any interest in this document, and they asked to remove the final part of our work from the agenda altogether,” Imamgali Tasmagambetov. 

This announcement was a follow-up to the previous decision against attending events of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) because it received no aid that it had requested during an Azerbaijani military incursion on its sovereign territory in May 2021.

Moreover, reports suggest that Yerevan has allegedly decided to supply the Tochka-U to Kyiv after it signed deals with Western countries to acquire cutting-edge military equipment. For instance, French-made armored vehicles, which were previously earmarked for Ukraine, were instead shipped to Armenia earlier this month.

According to a French media outlet, “The first confirmed delivery (to Armenia) is of Bastion light armored vehicles manufactured by the equipment manufacturer Arquus. The Bastion can carry a battle group of eight soldiers, protecting against small arms fire and mines.” Authorities in Georgia have verified that France sent armored personnel carriers, known as ACMAT Bastion, to Armenia through the Port of Poti.

Moreover, the report stated that France could provide 50 VAB MK3 armored vehicles, which offer multi-mission capabilities and elite protection to the military forces. EurAsian Times could not independently verify this particular information. Still, there is bickering that more arms transfer could follow as the French are looking to fill the vacuum amid mounting tensions between traditional allies Moscow and Yerevan.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s influence has only increased significantly in one post-Soviet nation: Armenia. Russian border guards were stationed at Armenia’s borders with Iran and Turkey in 1992. Three years later, in 1995, the second city of Armenia, Gyumri, welcomed a sizable Russian military installation.

In 2020, Russian peacekeepers were sent to Armenia to help maintain a truce after the country’s 44-day battle with the more powerful, Turkish-backed forces of Azerbaijan, which claimed thousands of lives on both sides.

However, since Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, things have changed. By the fall of 2022, it became evident that Moscow was unwilling to step in when Azerbaijan assaulted Armenian territory.

Things came to a head in September 2023 when Moscow demonstrated once more that it was unwilling to take a chance on a fight with Azerbaijan to help Armenia in the one-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In fact, despite the presence of Russian peacekeepers, nearly all of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh fled when Azerbaijan reclaimed the separatist province earlier this year.

Although Moscow has denied the accusations, several Armenians held Russia responsible for not intervening to halt what Baku described as an anti-terrorist operation. Analysts believe that Russian actions could be attributed to its decision to focus all efforts and resources on its fight against Ukraine, which has become emboldened with additional Western military support.

However, the Russian inability to come through for its closest ally has triggered a security rethink in Yerevan. In an unexpected development, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in September that his country could no longer rely on Moscow as a guarantor of its security due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

File Image: Tochka-U

The Prime Minister stated that Russia’s capabilities have changed as a result of the events in Ukraine while conceding that Moscow was trying to keep Azerbaijan and its close ally Turkey neutral, as both have grown in strategic significance for the Kremlin since the beginning of the war in Ukraine last year.

“Our strategy should be to try in this situation to decrease our dependency on others maximally,” he added. “We want to have an independent country, a sovereign country, but we have to have ways to avoid ending up in the center of clashes between West and East, North and South … There cannot be a case when Armenia becomes a ‘proxy.’ This is not permissible.”

Vladimir Putin during his visit to the 102nd Russian military base in Armenia

Even if it could not directly participate in the conflict or militarily step in to support Armenia, one option available to Russia was to increase the transfer of arms to the South Caucasian country. However, it has become widely known that amid massive equipment losses, Russia needs all the weapons it can manage to deploy.

Yerevan went so far as to complain that Armenia was forced to turn to Indian suppliers since Moscow could not provide the weaponry it had already paid for. This has also been understood to be why Armenia is progressively engaging with the West and reportedly acquiring arms from them now.

In September, Armenia launched a joint military exercise with the United States, a move that angered its main ally, Russia. At the time, Armenian officials announced that the drills were intended to improve tactical skill sharing and interoperability amongst forces participating in international peacekeeping missions.

Following the declaration by Armenia to bulwark its defenses in October 2023, France has inked the deals for supplying Thales-manufactured Ground Master 200 (GM200) radars and signed a memorandum of understanding to deliver the Mistral short-range air defense system. According to France’s Ministry of the Armed Forces, a second contract was for Yerevan to acquire night vision goggles and equipment manufactured by Safran.

On its part, even the European Union has discussed providing non-lethal military aid to Armenia. The EU Foreign Affairs Council discussed expanding the EU monitoring mission by dispatching additional observers and patrols to the Armenian border during their meeting on November 13. The Council also forewarned Azerbaijan against jeopardizing its territorial integrity and stressed the importance of maintaining vigilance against destabilization in Armenia.

With the strained relationship with Russia and alienation from the Russia-led CSTO alliance, Armenia is increasingly cultivating ties with the West. If the transfer of weapons to Ukraine is authenticated, it could signal a massive change in its security calculations, this time pointing toward Russia itself.

https://www.eurasiantimes.com/angry-armenia-to-arm-ukraine-with-tochka-u-ballistic-missile/