Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan underlines that the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed Azerbaijan is governed by racist regime that glorifies ethnic violence against Armenians and implants ethnic hatred into society, Pashinyan wrote in his Twitter micro blog.
“Forcing Armenians of Artsakh to live under Azerbaijani rule violates international law”, he wrote, calling on international community to recognize Artsakh’s independence.
23:35, 9 October, 2020
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 9, ARMENPRESS. The Italian ‘’Roma’’ football club handed 117 boxes of cloths and sportswear, which will be provided to the civilian population of Artsakh affected by the war unleashed by Azerbaijan. The boxes will be delivered to the Roma fan club of Armenia, ARMENPRESS was informed from Roma’s official website.
‘’Leaving the politics to one side for a moment, Roma Cares is there and will continue to be there for the club’s fans who are most in need – wherever they may be,” said Guido Fienga, the club’s CEO.
“With this donation we are taking a first step towards helping the children, women and men who are currently struggling in very difficult circumstances.”
Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Armenian professional footballer currently playing for ‘’Roma’’ thanked the leadership of his club for the support.
12:50, 6 October, 2020
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 6, ARMENPRESS. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has condemned the continuing escalation of violence in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone, reminding all sides of their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, the statement issued by his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric reads.
The Secretary-General “is gravely concerned by reports of the extension of hostilities, including the targeting of populated areas”.
The Secretary-General also underlined that there is no military solution to the conflict and urged to immediately cease all hostilities. He appealed to all relevant regional and international actors to actively exercise their influence to achieve an urgent end to the fighting and return to negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs.
Also on Monday, at a regular press briefing, Mr. Dujarric provided a humanitarian update on Nagorno Karabakh, noting that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) remains deeply concerned about the ongoing hostilities along the line of contact in the conflict zone.
On September 27, 2020, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale attack against the Republic of Artsakh, targeting also the civilian settlements, including the capital Stepanakert and the city of Shushi. In addition, the Azerbaijani armed forces have also targeted Armenia’s military and civilian infrastructures.
21 civilians in Artsakh and Armenia were killed, 80 were wounded as a result of the Azerbaijani aggression.
219 servicemen and volunteers have been killed in Artsakh from the Azerbaijani attacks.
Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
15:20, 1 October, 2020
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 1, ARMENPRESS. Reporter of 24News Sevak Vardumyan has been wounded as a result of Azerbaijani bombardments of the town of Martuni in Artsakh, the media outlet said.
“He sustained injuries to his back, he is not being transported to the hospital,” 24News said.
The Azerbaijani military targeted a group of journalists in Martuni on October 1.
Two French reporters of the Le Monde newspaper were wounded.
A cameraman for the ARMENIA TV Channel was also wounded.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
Qananyan, an artist who primarily works in more traditional mediums like clay and paint, told Creative Armenia in an interview that these artists working in traditional media might need to find ways to express themselves digitally in the post-Covid word.
“I still hope that the post-Covid world will roll back to the good old times we lived in,” she remarks.
Creative Armenia didn’t stop at just awarding artists for their work. They also started the SelfQuar Experiment, a webpage showcasing some of the best submissions to the prompt in an attempt to bring visibility and exposure to Armenian artists.
It would be an understatement to call the Armenian diaspora large. According to some estimates, as many as eleven million Armenians live outside of the country, in many different parts of the world.
“The Armenian diaspora is not just a benefit for times of crisis, but also in times of prosperity,” Ms Ter-Khachatryan tells Emerging Europe.
Creative Armenia found during the pandemic that Armenian artists needed support more than ever and that cultural patrons in the diaspora were more than ready to meet the challenges of the Covid-19 “new normal”.
“For the first time we had that strange feeling that it truly didn’t matter where we lived. Logging onto one of our many Zoom calls with our Creative Armenia network members, the boundaries between Armenia and its diaspora were in fact less visible and relevant than ever,” says Ms Ter-Khachatryan.
In June, Creative Armenia organised a digital summit titled Culture.20 where thousands of people gathered together to explore the future of art with six artists, all Creative Armenia AGBU fellows. The summit dealt with the dangers and opportunities of the digital transition, from AI-generated music to virtual museum exhibits.
Ms Ter-Khachatryan says that the way art is displayed and consumed in the future will definitely change and that the digital word is here to stay even after Covid-19.
“At Creative Armenia, we can already see this trend in the kind of submissions we receive: VR projects, digital immersive theatre experiences, and online concerts are no longer outliers,” she says. “True to form, artists have been very quick to sense and adapt to the limitations and possibilities of our time.”
In many countries, government aid for the arts was late and lacking. Ms Ter-Khachatryan says that it’s hard to measure what’s enough in times of global crisis and there has been a substantial government support already given, but then also a substantial need and demand which is still outstanding.
“Creative Armenia finds itself in the role of closing that gap, regardless of how great that gap seems, or how impossible to close,” she explains.
Still, despite the crisis and some setbacks in translating in-person experiences into the digital world, Ms Ter-Khachatryan speaks of a “digital fatigue” experiences by those who are hopping from one Zoom call to the next, it seems that art and artists are adapting and the Covid-19 pandemic does not spell the end for this sector.
“In the domain of art, the home of the human imagination, nothing is impossible,” Ms Ter-Khachatryan concludes.
Armenia’s Byurakan Observatory promotes regional astronomical tourism
13:56,
YEREVAN, AUGUST 28, ARMENPRESS. The Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory in Armenia is implementing an international astronomical tourism project directed at the region and has announced its official website August 28.
The website offers information and much more on the astrophysical history and development of Armenia and other countries in the region.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,708,
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: There are signs that the current escalation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, far from being incidental to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, is driven by Russia’s and Iran’s economic warfare against a competing state and the need to return Europe to dependency on their oil and gas in light of US sanctions. Armenia benefits from the bellicose activity thanks to a sophisticated information warfare campaign in a heated US election year that has been unmatched thus far by Azerbaijan. But Baku can still turn its underdog position around by pursuing an assertive and affirmative policy against aggressors on military, political, media, and legal fronts.
After Armenia’s attack on Azerbaijan’s borders on July 12, a flurry of speculative articles appeared that contained obvious disinformation intended to portray what had happened as either a continuation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, an extension of Armenian-Turkish tensions, or part of a larger proxy conflict between Turkey and Russia, which is present in Syria and Libya and has most recently divided NATO.
At first glance, the chain of events that led to the current conflict seems straightforward. Armenia attacked Azerbaijani positions without warning, putting at risk civilians residing in the Tovuz area. At least 11 members of the military and one elderly civilian were killed.
Armenia then proceeded to boast about having taken out a general for the first time ever while simultaneously claiming it had been provoked. Several other senior Azerbaijani officers were also killed, which points to a premeditated attack, not an act of spontaneous violence. Indeed, this development calls into question the narrative that the current escalation is just the latest in a series of skirmishes arising from Armenia’s illegal occupation of 20% of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has become a protracted crisis due to a combination of ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis from both Armenia and the occupied territories, the turning of over a million Azerbaijanis into refugees and IDPs, the turning of Armenia into a virtually monoethnic state, and the destruction of cultural heritage.
The last major escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict took place in 2016, when Azerbaijan reclaimed the strategic village of Çocuq Mərcanlı. As residents of the liberated village and elsewhere along the ceasefire line can attest, unprovoked violations are a part of daily life. Armenian snipers targeting civilians have wounded or killed many and forced many others to vacate their houses.
But this most recent attack was not launched from the occupied region, but rather along the international border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in close proximity to geopolitically essential oil pipelines.
Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the US Elin Suleymanov warned that Israel’s oil supply could be endangered due to these border clashes. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline “provides Israel with 40% of its oil,” but also ensures that Russia and Iran cannot monopolize delivery to Europe and Israel from the Caspian region. Azerbaijan, already a top competitor to Russia and Iran in supplying European energy needs, is about to bypass Armenia and Russia to become a significant supplier of gas to southern Europe via the Southern Gas Corridor, which is scheduled to be fully operational by year end.
The diversification of Europe’s LNG sources undermines Russian and Iranian political power, which is premised on the threat of leaving Europe out in the cold. Their positions were already precarious when the US ended all oil trade waivers for the Islamic Republic last year. It only just lifted waivers on Russia’s construction of the Nordstrom II pipeline (initially sanctioned in December 2019). Circumventing US sanctions is a matter of survival for these regimes.
Iran in particular has faced economic devastation due to Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign. Tehran, already more dependent on Beijing as a result of a recently concluded 25-year trade deal, has essentially rented out the oil fields in Ahwaz to China.
For Armenia, the new escalation has potentially favorable military and political ramifications. Armenia is part of a military bloc known as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The current conflict may be an attempt to draw Azerbaijan into a bigger conflagration with CSTO members, who are pledged to protect one another. According to Fariz Ismailzade, Vice Rector of the ADA University, the likelihood that this gambit will succeed is diminished by Azerbaijan’s good relations with two CSTO member states: Kazakhstan and Belarus.
Armenian lobbyists are trying to gain a political advantage by portraying the crisis as a standoff with Turkey (a position to which Turkey lends credence by offering to arm Azerbaijan) as well as with France (a member of the OSCE Minsk Group, which focuses on finding a peaceful resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict) and various other NATO members.
In the US, ANCA, a well-organized and politically influential Armenian lobby group, has been playing up the perception of the inseparability of the two Turkic countries in the public mind and taking advantage of general American ignorance of historical and political realities. It is attempting to tie Azerbaijan to Turkey’s Ottoman past and current neo-Ottoman ambitions. In addition, ANCA has manipulated various ethnic and religious biases in pursuit of political support, even attacking Israel’s Ambassador to Azerbaijan George Deek, who is Christian.
ANCA also seeks to benefit politically from a heated US presidential election year. It anticipates a more favorable outlook in Washington in the event that the Democrats prevail in November and is now planting the seeds of anti-Azerbaijan action, such as a proposed bill that would freeze all military sales to that country. The proposing of such a bill required a provocation, such as an act of war, which is why ANCA has been at the forefront of creating the perception that Azerbaijan struck first.
This is not a one-off event. ANCA cultivates relationships with both members of Congress and figures in the think tank world, constantly pushing the idea of “Artsakh,” a fake republic in the otherwise empty occupied territories that is unrecognized by anyone except Russia. ANCA creates layers of legal fictions via continuous unilateral actions such as repeated requests for large humanitarian packages from Congress for the ersatz entity, tying these requests to aid for Armenia proper.
There are red flags pointing to the planned and strategic nature of this operation. Indeed, in retrospect, there were warning signs, such as Iran’s growing presence in the vicinity and more direct assistance to Armenia for weeks prior to the attack. A few weeks prior to that, Iran and Armenia reinstated a visa-free regime, perhaps contributing to Armenia’s poor handling of COVID-19. In June, Russia and Armenia were engaging in talks about running biological labs, a convenient cover for bringing Russian biological weapons close to Azerbaijan, a development that would threaten all of the Caucasus and should concern the US.
Armenia and Russia are also interested in developing joint military forces. Not only is Russia completely running the show, but it is increasingly erasing any semblance of Armenia’s independence and asserting its own military presence in the region in a manner that can only be described as menacing. All these factors independently of each other should have been causes for concern, but their all occurring at once when the US is struggling with internal crises and a beleaguered foreign policy in a hotly contested election year points to a premeditated operation designed to help advance a political agenda.
Azerbaijan’s information warfare against Armenia has been partially successful, such as its display of sophisticated Israeli drones that Armenia, with mixed results, has tried to claim credit for downing. On the political front, however, the outcome so far has been largely driven by ANCA’s organized campaign.
Azerbaijan should respond to these attacks through a combination of methods. First, it should strive to become a “country brand,” like Singapore, by diversifying its economy away from oil dependency, becoming a hi-tech hub for the region, and building investor confidence through joint ventures and the expansion of electronic government services. Ismail Rustamov, the representative of Azerbaijani society in the US, has suggested steps focused on investor confidence to help overcome perceptions of business risks.
Azerbaijan should form a closer joint defense relationship with the US, benefiting from joint training and insights from experienced field operatives and officers. Additionally, greater resources need to be marshalled for information warfare and the political aspect of the battle being waged, including supporting professional media to counter disinformation, building personal and long-term relationships with public officials at all levels, and, most importantly, vigorously pursuing legislative and legal relief in US, European, and international bodies. Armenian officials responsible for human rights abuses should be sanctioned. Only when Azerbaijan shows its willingness to combat fake news while broadening outreach efforts—while passionately and rightfully combating attacks on its physical sovereignty and territorial integrity—will its allies fully support the verity of its claims and understand the global and geopolitical stakes of siding with or giving a pass to Armenia’s aggression.
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Irina Tsukerman is a human rights and national security attorney based in New York. She has written extensively on geopolitics and US foreign policy for a variety of American, Israeli, and other international publications.