Author: Emil Lazarian

Anna Hakobyan, the wife of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, will participate in the Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen in Kyiv on 6 September.

Source: Radio Liberty Armenia, citing the summit’s website

Details: The media reports that it is likely that Hakobyan will deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan previously stated that Yerevan is not an ally of Moscow in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

The summit is also attended by the wives of the leaders of the United Kingdom, Japan, Türkiye, Spain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Israel and several other countries, as well as officials of the European Union, journalists and actors. This year’s event is dedicated to mental health.

Background: 

• Hakobyan’s visit to Kyiv is taking place amid tense relations between Armenia and Russia.

• Previously, Pashinyan publicly stated that Russia failed its peacekeeping mission in Nagorno-Karabakh. He also said that “in the field of security, depending or being tied to only one place is in itself a strategic mistake”.

• Recently, the government of Armenia sent for ratification the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to the National Assembly, which issued an arrest warrant for the President of Russia in February this year.

• The representative of Moscow reported that they had asked Yerevan for an explanation of this decision.

• On 6 September, the Ministry of Defence of Armenia announced joint military exercises with the Americans.

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https://news.yahoo.com/wife-armenian-pm-visit-kyiv-093204676.html

Russia expressed concern on Wednesday about plans for a US-Armenian military exercise in Armenia next week, saying it would be watching closely.

The Armenian defense ministry said the purpose of the Sept. 11-20 “Eagle Partner 2023” exercise was to prepare its forces to take part in international peacekeeping missions.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the exercise required alertness on Russia’s part, and Moscow would be monitoring it.

A US military spokesperson said 85 US soldiers and 175 Armenians would take part. He said the Americans – including members of the Kansas National Guard which has a 20-year-old training partnership with Armenia – would be armed with rifles and would not be using heavy weaponry.

The Kremlin also said on Wednesday that the Wagner Group did not exist from a legal point of view, after being asked to comment on a British decision to designate the group as a terrorist organization.

Britain’s interior minister described Wagner as “violent and destructive” and said it acted as a “military tool of Vladimir Putin’s Russia overseas.”

The UK Parliament’s influential Foreign Affairs Committee recommended in July that Wagner be outlawed. The committee said British authorities had “underplayed and underestimated” the threat posed by the mercenary group.

The committee said Wagner’s future was uncertain after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived armed mutiny against Russia’s top military leaders in June. The lawmakers said Britain should take advantage of the confused situation to “disrupt” Wagner.

https://english.aawsat.com/world/4529981-russia-concerned-about-us-military-exercise-armenia

The U.S. will hold military exercises with Armenia this month in a widely unexpected move that has prompted Russia—a long-time backer of Armenia and fellow member of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)—to express its “concern.”

The “Eagle Partner 2023” drill, while expected to be only a small exercise, appears to be the latest step in a long-term process of Armenian moving away from Moscow’s influence because of the Kremlin’s inability to resolve the ongoing Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the September 11-20 Eagle Partner 2023 exercise is designed to prepare its forces for participation in international peacekeeping missions. The focus, it said, will be “stabilization operations between conflicting parties during peacekeeping tasks.”

A U.S. military spokesperson told Reuters that 85 American soldiers and 175 Armenians would be involved in the drill. The U.S. troops taking part are members of the Kansas National Guard, which has been training with Armenian forces for 20 years. The spokesperson also said no heavy weaponry will be involved in the drill.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the news “causes concern, especially in the current situation. Therefore, we will deeply analyze this news and monitor the situation.”

Russia has traditionally held sway in the South Caucasus region, where the Soviet Union’s borders once encompassed the now independent states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Moscow still has a military base in Armenia, and the country is part of the Kremlin-led CSTO military alliance.

But Moscow-Armenia relations have been deteriorating because of the ongoing Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but whose 120,000 people are mostly ethnic Armenians. It is governed by the self-declared Republic of Artsakh.

The most recent clash over the territory concluded with an Azerbaijani victory in 2020, and Russian peacekeepers were then deployed to uphold the agreement that ended the fighting. It was the second large-scale conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh since the two nations became independent in the 1990s.

But Moscow’s forces have proved unable to prevent resurgent tensions and keep open a key road—known as the Lachin Corridor—linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijani forces blocked the road last December despite the presence of Russian troops. The route remains closed, leading to significant food shortages in the enclave.

The tensions over the corridor reportedly prompted the removal this week of the head of Russia’s peacekeeping force, Colonel General Alexander Lentsov. He is the second commander to have been removed in 2023, having replaced his predecessor, Major General Andrei Volkov, in April.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email to request comment.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said this past weekend it had been a mistake for his country to become so dependent on Russian protection. “Armenia’s security architecture was 99.999 percent linked to Russia, including when it came to the procurement of arms and ammunition,” Pashinyan told Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

“But today we see that Russia itself is in need of weapons, arms and ammunition [for the Ukraine war] and in this situation it’s understandable that even if it wishes so, the Russian Federation cannot meet Armenia’s security needs,” he continued. “This example should demonstrate to us that dependence on just one partner in security matters is a strategic mistake.”

The Kremlin hit back, with Peskov telling reporters that Russia “is an absolutely integral part of this region” and “plays a consistent, very important role in stabilizing the situation in this region…and we will continue to play this role.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Pashinyan’s comments were “public rhetoric verging on rudeness.”

Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted “the United States’ concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh” in a call to Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev.

“He reiterated our call to reopen the Lachin Corridor to humanitarian, commercial, and passenger traffic, while recognizing the importance of additional routes from Azerbaijan,” a State Department readout said.

Pashinyan’s measures undermining ties with Russia have gone beyond the rhetorical. Last year, Armenia refused to allow scheduled CSTO exercises on its territory and then said it would not send troops to take part in alliance drills in Belarus.

Also last year, Pashinyan humiliated Russian President Vladimir Putin and other CSTO leaders by refusing to sign a joint alliance declaration at the conclusion of a summit in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. The prime minister said the document did not offer a “clear political assessment” condemning Azerbaijani incursions into Armenian territory.

Recent weapons purchases from France further indicate Yerevan’s nascent Western pivot. Armenia has traditionally relied on Russia almost exclusively for its military acquisitions. But its defeat by Azerbaijan’s technologically superior force in 2020 pointed to the country’s need to update its arsenals.

Another notable signal of Pashinyan’s intentions came in the form of Armenia’s proposal to ratify the Rome Statute, the foundational document of the International Criminal Court. The court issued an arrest warrant for Putin earlier this year in connection with charges of forced mass deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.

The Russian Foreign Ministry criticized the plan as “absolutely unacceptable” and warned of “extremely negative” consequences for bilateral relations.

In a further apparent rebuke of Russian conduct in Ukraine, Pashinyan’s wife—Anna Hakobyan—will reportedly attend an aid summit in Kyiv being organized by Olena Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-voices-concern-ally-joint-military-drills-us-armenia-csto-azerbaijan-1825002

In an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica published on Sunday September 3rd, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made the following statements:

Armenia’s security architecture was 99.999% linked to Russia, including when it came to the procurement of arms and ammunition. But today we see that Russia itself is in need of weapons, arms and ammunition (for the war in Ukraine) and in this situation it’s understandable that even if it wishes so, the Russian Federation cannot meet Armenia’s security needs. This example should demonstrate to us that dependence on just one partner in security matters is a strategic mistake.

In view of the fact that Russia has a mutual defense contract with Armenia, a Russian military post inside the Republic of Armenia and a Russian peacekeeping force stationed at the border between Azerbaijan and the landlocked, contested breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh to Armenians who’ve lived there since ancient times), Putin has ignored the fact that Azerbaijan’s blockade is causing Armenians in Artsakh to starve to death, ignoring the worsening, blatant humanitarian crisis with families down to rationing a piece of bread all day.

Letting thousands of Armenians starve is hardly honoring Moscow’s defense pact with Armenia. It’s a clear, sobering reality that Russia has elected to abandon its security commitment with the Republic of Armenia, allowing the 3-mile Lachin corridor separating Artsakh from Armenia as its only pathway connection to the outside world remain closed now approaching a year since December12, 2022. 90% of Artsakh’s food supply arrived from Armenia through the crucial corridor. Pashinyan stated that with Russia waging war in Ukraine for more than a year and a half, he concludes that Moscow is unable to fulfill its obligations to Armenia or deems Armenia not pro-Russian enough, and that the Kremlin no longer views its involvement in the South Caucasus as a high enough priority. In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insists:

Russia is an absolutely integral part of this region. Russia plays a consistent, very important role in stabilising the situation in this region … and we will continue to play this role Russia is an integral part of this region.

On Tuesday September 5th, the always saucy Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was far more bluntly critical of Pashinyan, claiming his comments were “public rhetoric verging on rudeness,” adding that rather than blaming others, Yerevan should take responsibility for its own actions.

In the face of continued Azerbaijani aggression in recent years, the Yerevan government as a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) also urgently requested support from fellow CSTO members Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, but that too fell on deaf ears. So running out of options, Prime Minister Pashinyan decided to increase Armenia’s ties with the West, and as a result, from September 11 to the 20th, Armenia will participate in joint military exercises with the United States. Though this may be understandable, it’s very likely yet another decisive error in judgment since relying on Washington for much of anything these days, much less for national security, invites deep trouble. Just look at what’s happening to Ukraine’s national security ever since 2014 when the US illegally overthrew its democratically elected leader and installed a neo-Nazi government in Kiev.

In a statement on Wednesday September 6th, Armenian Defense Ministry announced the joint military drills with the US, dubbed “Eagle Partner 2023,” to be conducted “in the framework of preparation for participation in international peacekeeping missions,” opening the door to a potential pandora’s box with another Ukraine scenario for Armenia. Reuters reports that a US military spokesman specified that only 75 US soldiers and 185 Armenian soldiers will take part in this rather small scale 9-day operation.  It’s likely more symbolic, sending the obvious message to Putin that he needs to intervene in Artsakh before conditions grow worse. Dmitry Peskov’s response to the announced military drill between Armenia and the US:

Of course, such news causes concern, especially in the current situation. Therefore, we will deeply analyse this news and monitor the situation.

And of course, the now US deputy Secretary of State, neocon Kiev regime changer herself Victoria Nuland, has been salivating over creating the divisive wedge between Armenia and Russia for a full decade as yet one more pro-Western neighbor on Russia’s doorstep falling into the pocket of the anti-Russian West. This all could’ve and should’ve been avoided had President Vladimir Putin simply given the ethically responsive order for his “peacekeepers” to merely do their assigned job to ensure peace prevails by forcing the Lachin reopening. But allowing Baku to commit more genocide against more Armenians is definitely not keeping the peace, nor, for that matter, in anyone’s best interest living in this treacherous world. If it wasn’t such high stakes flirting with World War III, Armenia courting favor with Russia’s chief rival is like a jealous schoolgirl flirting with another boy to make her boyfriend jealous.

Getting back to today’s dire stakes, by wilfully refusing to permit food, fuel and vital medical supplies be brought into Artsakh from Armenia, Azerbaijan is violating the Moscow brokered truce after the Azeri-Armenian 44-day war in late 2020. But even more significant is that Baku is premeditatedly starving 120,000 Armenians and resuming the genocide where Turkey left off a century ago, this time perpetrated by Azerbaijan’s Turkic brethren. The International Red Cross has a fleet of trucks sitting idly by at the border for weeks now loaded with vital emergency supplies but unable to enter Artsakh, while Russian soldiers passively look on, allowing this international crime spectacle to go on unimpeded and unpunished, essentially rendering Russia an accomplice to the international crime of genocide.

Even former prosecutor to the Hague’s International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno Ocampo, released an August 7th report entitled “Genocide against Armenians in 2023,” accusing Azerbaijan outright of legally meeting the definition of genocide, and recommending the case be brought before the ICC. But all it prompted was an emergency UN Security Council meeting held two weeks later on August 21st urgently calling for Azeri President Ilham Aliyev to lift the Lachin corridor blockade and allow supplies through. It changed nothing as dictator Aliyev correctly calculated that with the world in multiple energy crises now and needing oil from his Caspian reserves more than ever, the rest of the world would meekly squawk, then look the other way. He was right as without any negative consequence backing up the feeble UN pleas, why would the Aliyev dictatorship even anticipate any unwanted consequence.

If UN Security Council member Russia’s peacekeeping force is looking the other way, refusing to intercede despite clear violation of the 2020 truce signed by Baku, Moscow and Yerevan, then Aliyev remains smugly confident that starving a few Armenians in a territory Josef Stalin gave to Azerbaijan a century ago despite 96% of the residents at the time being Armenian living in their homeland for millennia, that the world wrongly still agrees technically and legally it still belongs to Azeris. Yet this morally reprehensible 1923 decision by Stalin as perhaps the world’s biggest genocidal murderer in history, is still allowed to stand in a world that doesn’t care about 120,000 people whose lives are increasingly in grave danger now.

A CNN article on Wednesday September 6th revealed the plight of one Artsakh resident, Ani Kirakosyani, from the village of Haturk, who became pregnant a month after the blockade began. With food unavailable, she’s been living off of tomatoes and beans from her garden. Public transportation in Artsakh was suspended on July 25th due to fuel shortages brought on by the corridor closure, resulting in Ani not able to receive medical care. Six months into her pregnancy, experiencing severe abdominal pain, landed her in the hospital. But the ambulance driver had to pick up six other patients along the way due to fuel rationing. Ani was told that her complications necessitated her giving birth three months premature. With her husband working with the military 100 miles away, again from lack of fuel, he could not be there with his wife when doctors told her she had a stillbirth resulting from malnutrition. By phone Ani Kirakosyani told CNN:

If not for the blockade, I would be playing with my child today.

The number of miscarriages in Artsakh have soared to four times the rate from this time last year.  Azeri military refuse to allow international media to enter the enclave since the blockade went into effect nearly nine months ago. My August 17th article on this growing humanitarian crisis reported that two days earlier on the 15th of last month, 40-year old K. Hovhannisyan became the first starvation casualty dying from chronic malnutrition caused by what appears to be a second Armenian genocide 2.0.

Olesya Vartanyan, a senior South Caucasus analyst at the non-profit conflict prevention organization Crisis Group, told Reuters that in recent days, social media footage indicates increasing Azeri military movement along the Armenia-Azerbaijan frontline, warning:

It doesn’t look good at all. 

So, the world is watching genocide repeat itself and Putin’s Russia shamefully refuses to come to Armenians’ aid in Artsakh and honor its security commitment. One can easily understand why Republic of Armenia’s Prime Minister Pashinyan is stating it was Armenia’s regretful, strategic mistake to depend solely on Russia for its security. At the same time, it’s a disgrace the world of nations just sits back passively allowing Armenians to starve to death once again a century after a million and a half perished from the last Armenian genocide. But that’s the world we’re living in today, where the value of human life seemingly grows cheaper by the day. Elites are actively committing genocide, exterminating the entire human race, with few among us aware or even care, much less dare to fight back for our species survival. With the devil’s dominion earthly affairs, in 2023 perhaps more than ever, Satin still rules over our planet.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate, former Army officer and author of “Don’t Let the Bastards Getcha Down,” exposing a faulty US military leadership system based on ticket punching up the seniority ladder, invariably weeding out the best and brightest, leaving mediocrity and order followers rising to the top as politician-bureaucrat generals designated to lose every modern US war by elite design. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In Los Angeles he found himself battling the largest county child protective services in the nation within America’s thoroughly broken and corrupt child welfare system.

The experience in both the military and child welfare system prepared him well as a researcher and independent journalist, exposing the evils of Big Pharma and how the Rockefeller controlled medical and psychiatric system inflict more harm than good, case in point the current diabolical pandemic hoax and genocide. As an independent journalist for the last decade, Joachim has written hundreds of articles for many news sites, like Global Research, lewrockwell.com and currently https://jameshfetzer.org. As a published bestselling author on Amazon of a 5-book volume series entitled Pedophilia & Empire: Satan, Sodomy & the Deep State, his A-Z sourcebook series exposes the global pedophilia scourge is available free at https://pedoempire.org/contents/. Joachim also hosts the Revolution Radio weekly broadcast “Cabal Empire Exposed,” every Friday morning at 6AM EST (ID: revradio, password: rocks!).

Five years after Armenia’s pro-European colour revolution, disappointment with Russia as an economic and security partner is higher than ever. Nonetheless, European Union accession remains unlikely anytime soon. 

Armenia may officially remain in the Kremlin-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), despite prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s threat this May to withdraw from the alliance, but its leaders and public are anything but quiet about their dissatisfaction with the allies that have repeatedly let them down. 

“Armenia’s security architecture was 99.999 per cent linked to Russia, including when it came to the procurement of arms and ammunition,” Pashinyan (pictured above with French President Emmanuel Macron) said in an interview published on September 3.

“But today we see that Russia itself is in need of weapons, arms and ammunition (for the war in Ukraine) and in this situation it’s understandable that even if it wishes so, the Russian Federation cannot meet Armenia’s security needs.” 

“This example should demonstrate to us that dependence on just one partner in security matters is a strategic mistake,” he added. 

• Azerbaijan’s land border closures make little sense
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Many Armenians feel betrayed that Moscow and the CSTO failed to provide more support during the 2020 Karabakh War with Azerbaijan and declined to come to Armenia’s defence after an Azerbaijani incursion into the territory of Armenia-proper in September 2022 left almost 300 dead. Between 2011 and 2020, Russia was the largest supplier of arms to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. 

A poll taken by the International Republican Institute (IRI) this spring found that more Armenians viewed France and Iran as important security partners than Russia. France, Iran and the United States—all home to large Armenian diasporas—were viewed as the top three “most important political partners for Armenia” by 75, 67 and 52 per cent of respondents respectively, while Russia was fourth on the list with 50 per cent.  

While the IRI’s 2019 survey found 93 per cent of Armenians considered relations with Russia to be “good”, with only six per cent of respondents viewing them as “bad,” only 50 per cent still considered relations “good” this spring and 49 per cent viewed them as “bad.” 

The EU Neighbours East project’s annual public opinion survey in 2022 found that more Armenians trust the European Union than any other international organisation—55 per cent compared to only 45 per cent for the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and 35 per cent for the CSTO. 

Armenia has been gradually deepening ties with the West since its pro-European 2018 colour revolution, and the last year has seen a rapid acceleration in the deterioration of its security ties with Russia—despite still hosting Russian troops and theoretically depending on Russian peacekeepers to enforce the ceasefire that ended the 2020 war. 

Since last September’s escalation with Azerbaijan, Armenia has taken a host of concrete actions to distance itself from the CSTO.  

At a November CSTO summit in Yerevan, Pashinyan refused to sign a declaration and a document on joint measures to provide assistance to Armenia. He justified his decision by citing the lack of a “clear political assessment” by the alliance of Azerbaijan’s offensive two months prior.  

In March, when Yerevan would normally have chosen the CSTO’s new deputy secretary general, it renounced its right to take part in the bloc’s leadership rotation.  

That same month, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Putin for his alleged role in war crimes in Ukraine, and one week later, Armenia’s constitutional court cleared the ratification of the ICC treaty. If approved, it would compel Armenian authorities to arrest Putin, should he ever visit.  

Even though accepting ICC jurisdiction would be as much about gaining new legal tools to hold Azerbaijan accountable as thumbing it to Putin, Moscow has reacted with stern warnings of “extremely negative” consequences for Yerevan.  

Nonetheless, Pashinyan’s government formally requested the ratification of the ICC treaty by parliament on September 1. In a symbolic move, the Armenian envoy to the CSTO was recalled on September 5 and reassigned to the Netherlands, where the ICC is headquartered.  

Most shocking of all, despite refusing to host a CSTO military exercise on its territory this January, Armenia announced on September 6 that it will hold a joint exercise with American troops from September 10 to 11 called “Eagle Partner 2023”.  

The snub came a day after Armenia decided it would provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine for the first time since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Pashinyan’s wife, Anna Hakobian, will personally deliver the aid to Kyiv.  

Armenia scores on democracy indices are comparable to several EU candidates. In Freedom House’s Nations in Transit 2023 report, Armenia scored 35 out of 100, just below EU candidates Moldova at 37 and Ukraine at 39 and above prospective candidate Georgia at 34. Armenia was the only country assessed in the report with improvements on more than one democracy indicator.  

However, Armenia is yet to apply for EU membership and would face unique challenges in its accession process. Armenia— along with Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine—was set to sign an Association Agreement that included a free trade agreement with the EU at the 2013 Eastern Partnership summit, but then-prime minister Serzh Sargsyan abruptly backed out in favour of joining the EEU, likely under pressure from Russia. The EEU’s own terms are incompatible with a free-trade agreement with the EU. 

However, in 2017, Armenia and the EU agreed to a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement covering issues from human rights and rule of law to mining and tourism. In 2021, Armenia finalised an agreement to join the European Common Aviation Area. 

But before it would be able to pursue full EU membership, Armenia will almost certainly have to withdraw from both the CSTO and EEU. That could potentially expose Armenia to a decades-long period of economic and security limbo as it pursues the lengthy and arduous process of joining the EU with access to neither the EEU nor EU’s single markets and is on the receiving end of Moscow’s ire without other meaningful security guarantees.  

If, as Pashinyan says, it is a “strategic mistake” to choose “just one partner in security matters”, trying to simultaneously balance the support of France, the United States, Iran, India, and—to some extent—Russia also has its risks.

https://emerging-europe.com/news/let-down-by-moscow-armenia-looks-to-the-west/