Author: Boris Nahapetian

ArmInfo. In case a decision is made on Armenia joining the Allied State as “nominal Tatarstan” or “nominal Buryatia”, no one is going to inquire about Armenia’s  opinion, Stepan Safaryan, Head of the Armenian Institute of  International and Security Affairs (AIISA), said in an interview with  ArmInfo. 

“All the talks about choosing between bad and worse are surprising.  This opinion will turn into a real disaster for our society and  people. We must not surrender our hard-won nationhood, sovereignty  and freedom – albeit relative – to anyone,” Mr Safaryan said. 

According to him, the Armenian elite and society should focus on how  they could prevent such developments. Therefore, discussions should  be focused on the ways of retaining and strengthening Armenia’s  statehood, not on renouncing it. Mr Safaryan considers wrong the  parallels between the Allied State and the EU drawn by Armenia’s  ex-president Robert Kocharyan. In this context, he notes that  comparing an economic structure with a supranational Allied State is  at least irrelevant. The recent action in support of the war in  Ukraine, attended by several dozens and, later, many more people, is  extremely detrimental to the Armenian state. The videos of the event  on social media cause a surprise in Europe and in the entire  civilized world, particularly in the context of a nation that  survived a genocide and suffered the consequences of the  Turkish-Azerbaijani fascism.  

“And Azerbaijanis and Turks are sure to take advantage of this by  drawing parallels between Armenian and Russian expansionism, to say  nothing of even more unfavorable comparisons. By means of social  networking bots they will cause the collective West to form an  opinion of Armenians in the interests of Armenians’ foes. Their  specific goal is showing general approval of the war in Ukraine in  Armenia’s society, and they are achieving it step by step.  Simultaneously, the agenda of destroying Armenia’s statehood has been  put into circulation in the media environment,” Mr Safaryan said. 

ArmInfo. The Venice Commission welcomes the Armenian authorities’ intention to reform the judiciary. It also understands the motivation behind the preparation of the  Draft Amendments, notably to free the judiciary of judges who, in the  past, had committed serious human rights violations and thus  undermined the general public trust in the judiciary.

The Venice Commission does not see the need for new preventive  measures, as they already seem to exist in the current Judicial Code,  which provides strong grounds to hold judges liable for the violation  of human rights which take place in the future, according to the  Joint Opinion of the Venice Commission and the CE Directorate General  of Human Rights and Rule of Law.   

The 18-page documents reads, in particular that “By letter of 16  December 2021, Mr Karen Andreasyan, Minister of Justice of Armenia,  requested an opinion from the Venice Commission on the draft Laws on  making amendments to the Constitutional Law on the Judicial Code and  to the Constitutional Law on the Constitutional Court.” 

The full version of the document is available here:  

ArmInfo. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry began to “teach history” to the Russian Foreign Ministry, deciding that they know the history of the Russian  Federation better than one of the world’s superpowers itself. This  time they are consulting on the fact of describing the content of the  text of the Turkmenchay Treaty.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry accused the Russian Foreign Ministry  of distorting the text of the Turkmenchay Agreement on the official  website of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“On the day of the signing of the Declaration on Allied Cooperation  between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation, the  fact that the distorted information on the Treaty of Turkmenchay of  1828 was published on the official website of the Russian Foreign  Ministry is surprisingly sad and regrettable,” the statement of the  Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan reads.

So, Baku was touched by the presence of references to Armenia in the  text of the document. Thus, Baku assures that the _expression_ “Eastern  Armenia” is not mentioned in any way in the text of the above-  mentioned agreement and calls on the Russian Foreign Ministry to  correct the allegedly unreliable information.  It should be noted  that the historical and documentary department of the Russian Foreign  Ministry published a text with some historical details yesterday.  In  particular, it recalls that on February 22 (10), 1828, the  Turkmanchay peace treaty was signed between the Russian Empire and  Persia, which ended the second Russian-Persian war of 1826-1828.

The Treaty confirmed Russia’s pre-emptive right to keep a military  fleet in the Caspian Sea, as well as the freedom of navigation of  Russian merchant ships. The Erivan and Nakhichevan khanates (Eastern  Armenia) passed to the Russian Empire. The Iranian government  undertook not to interfere with the resettlement of Armenians in the  Armenian region established on the territory of these khanates, which  contributed to the unification of the Armenian people within the  Russian Empire.  The parties exchanged missions at the level of  envoys and established consular relations. Simultaneously with the  agreement, the “Trade Act” was signed, according to which Russian  merchants received the right to free trade throughout Iran.  The  Turkmenchay Peace was a major success for Russian diplomacy. It  contributed to the strengthening of Russia’s influence in the Middle  East and became the basis of Russian-Persian relations until 1917.   The Russian poet and diplomat A.S. Griboyedov, who at that time  served as editor of the conference minutes, played an important role  in developing the terms of the Treaty. He made some important  clarifications in the text of the peace treaty – in particular, in  the part that concerned the conditions for the resettlement and  amnesty of the population of the border regions. Griboyedov also  compiled and edited the final text of the draft treaty. In October  1828 he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary in Tabriz. On February  11 (January 30), 1829, an outstanding Russian diplomat tragically  died at his official post during a provoked attack on the Russian  mission in Tehran by a fanatical mob.