Author: Emil Lazarian

Wednesday, 
Pashinian Defends Policy Of ‘Diversifying’ Security Ties
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian speaks in parliament (file photo)
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has defended the policy of his 
government seeking to diversify relations in the security sphere, again noting 
the failure of the South Caucasus nation’s formal ally, Russia, to sell arms to 
it. Apparently implying Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine that admittedly 
consumes a vast amount of armaments and resources from Moscow, Pashinian said 
that the absence of arms supplies from partners was also due to “objective 
reasons.”
“We are looking for other security partners. And we are looking for and finding 
other security partners, we are trying to sign contracts, acquire some 
armaments. This is our policy,” the Armenian leader said in parliament on 
Wednesday. Armenia recently signed military cooperation deals with France for the 
acquisition of such weapons as armored personnel vehicles, radars and 
short-range missiles. Reports in media have also indicated that Armenia has signed contracts for the 
purchase of several types of armaments from India, including multiple-launch 
rocket systems, artillery, anti-tank rockets and ammunition, as well as mostly 
recently anti-drone military equipment. During the question-and-answer session in parliament today Pashinian again 
refused to be drawn into the discussion of whether Armenia plans to formally 
quit the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russian-led defense 
alliance of several post-Soviet countries of which Armenia is a member, nor 
would he speak about any security alternatives to membership in this 
organization. “We are not planning to announce a change in our policy in strategic terms as 
long as we haven’t made a decision to quit the CSTO,” Pashinian said in reply to 
a question from an opposition lawmaker. On Tuesday Pashinian announced that he would not attend a CSTO summit scheduled 
to take place in the Belarusian capital of Minsk later this month. Earlier this 
year Armenia also declined to participate in CSTO military drills, while hosting 
joint exercises with the United States military in Yerevan. This and several 
other moves by Yerevan drew angry reactions from Russia that has accused the 
Pashinian administration of systematically “destroying” relations with Moscow. Officials in Yerevan have not concealed their frustration with the CSTO, 
considering that the Russia-led bloc has failed to fulfill its obligation to 
Armenia to secure its borders and protect its sovereign territory against 
incursions by Azerbaijan. “Our most important note concerning the processes taking place in the CSTO and 
our positions in this regard is that unfortunately the CSTO, with its de-jure 
mandatory obligations, did not provide a proper response to Armenia’s security 
challenges, and this has happened time and again,” Pashinian said, adding that 
the absence of the CSTO’s proper response was also “not understandable for our 
society.”
The Armenian prime minister said that the “fundamental problem” was that the 
CSTO was refusing to de-jure fixate its area of responsibility in Armenia. “In 
these conditions this could mean that by silently participating we could join 
the logic that would question Armenia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. We can’t allow ourselves such a thing, and by making such decisions [not to 
attend CSTO gatherings] we give the CSTO and ourselves time to think over 
further actions,” Pashinian said. Tensions between Armenia and Russia rose further after Azerbaijan’s September 
19-20 military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh that led to the exodus of the 
region’s virtually entire ethnic Armenian population. Armenia, in particular, 
blamed Russian peacekeepers deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh under a 2020 ceasefire 
agreement between Moscow, Baku and Yerevan for failing to protect the local 
Armenians. The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it “regrets” Pashinian’s latest decision not to 
attend the upcoming CSTO summit, while a spokesperson for Alyaksandr Lukashenka, 
the formal host of the gathering in Minsk, said that during their phone call 
earlier this week the Belarusian leader warned the Armenian prime minister 
against making “hasty decisions”, suggesting that he “should seriously think 
over his next steps that could be aimed at disintegration.”
U.S. Says Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians Entitled To Return Home
Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State (file photo). Ethnic Armenians who left Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan took full control of 
the region in a lightening military operation in September are entitled to 
return home, a senior United States official has said. During a Tuesday press briefing in Washington a journalist asked Matthew Miller, 
a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, to give a preview of what would 
be discussed during a congressional hearing on the future of Nagorno-Karabakh 
that was planned for the next day, November 15. The correspondent, in particular, said: “You have Azerbaijan on [the] one hand 
celebrating the victory… in a town surrounded by [the] Russian army. You have 
Armenia [that] is being bullied by Russia every single day, saying that [it] 
won’t go anywhere… So is there any happy ending there, in your opinion?”
According to the State Department’s official website, Miller replied: “I will 
just say what I said before. I don’t want to talk about tomorrow’s hearing, but 
I will say that we continue to believe that people who left Nagorno-Karabakh 
have the right to return home if they want to do so, and that right must be 
preserved.”
More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh in the days that 
followed Azerbaijan’s offensive on September 19-20. According to different 
estimates, a couple of dozen ethnic Armenians currently remain in 
Nagorno-Karabakh that is under full Azerbaijani control now. Despite scaling back its peacekeeping mission, Russian servicemen still remain 
in the region where they were first deployed under the terms of a 
Moscow-brokered ceasefire agreement that stopped a six-week war between Armenia 
and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh in the fall of 2020. Under that tripartite 
deal the Russian peacekeeping force would stay in the region at least until 2025. After the exodus of the local Armenian population and before that, in conditions 
of an effective blockade imposed by Azerbaijan, Armenia has repeatedly 
criticized Russia for failing to fulfill its main mission, that is to protect 
Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population. Officially Azerbaijan does not object to Armenians returning to Nagorno-Karabakh 
and living under Baku’s jurisdiction as Azerbaijani citizens, but authorities in 
Yerevan and representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh point to the absence of security 
guarantees for such returnees after what happened in the region during the past 
several years and months. Azerbaijan, at the same time, promotes the idea of the return of tens of 
thousands of ethnic Azeris to the places where they lived in Armenia before the 
conflict began in the late 1980s. In doing so Azerbaijani officials and media 
often use the term “Western Azerbaijan”, suggesting that Azeris who left Armenia 
lived in their “historical lands.”
Speaking at the Paris Peace Conference on November 10, Armenian Prime Minister 
Nikol Pashinian charged that the concept of “Western Azerbaijan” promoted by 
Baku is “preparing a new war against the Republic of Armenia.”
Pashinian also stressed that about 360,000 ethnic Armenians were forcibly 
displaced from Azerbaijan since the conflict began over three decades ago. Armenian Official Sees Possibility Of Continuing Peace Talks With Azerbaijan In 
Washington
Armen Grigorian, secretary of the Security Council of Armenia (file photo). Armenia sees the possibility of continuing negotiations with Azerbaijan over a 
peace treaty in Washington, a senior official in Yerevan has said. In an interview with Public Television aired on Tuesday evening Secretary of 
Armenia’s Security Council Armen Grigorian reminded that Azerbaijan had refused 
to attend a meeting of the two countries’ leaders that was planned to be held 
with the European Union’s mediation in Brussels in late October. “We are ready to continue negotiations in this [Brussels] format to finalize the 
peace treaty and sign it by the end of the year if it is possible. There is also 
a possibility of continuing such negotiations at another level, for instance, in 
Washington. Armenia is ready, and let’s hope that such a meeting will take 
place,” Grigorian said. The official reminded that Louis Bono, a U.S. special envoy for 
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks, recently visited the region. “He was discussing possible meetings. Of course, it is not final, but one of the 
goals of the visit was to organize a meeting,” Grigorian said. Asked why such a meeting could not be organized in Moscow, Grigorian said: “We 
go where we consider it important, where we see an opportunity at the moment and 
from where we have received clear offers. I am not aware of any offers from 
Moscow.”
Commenting on a series of decisions by official Yerevan to skip major gatherings 
of Russia-led groupings, including the latest decision by Armenian Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian not to attend an upcoming summit of the Collective 
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Minsk, Grigorian emphasized that Armenia 
had been asking help from the CSTO since May 2021, but did not receive the 
necessary assistance to protect its sovereign territory against Azerbaijani 
aggression. “We have had numerous questions to the CSTO, answers to which we have not 
received till now. And this is also the reason why Armenia does not participate 
in the CSTO [sessions],” the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council said. Earlier this year Armenia also refused to participate in CSTO military drills, 
while hosting joint military drills with the United States in Yerevan. Pashinian also declined to attend a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent 
States (CIS), a wider and looser grouping of ex-Soviet states, in Kyrgyzstan on 
October 13. These and other similar moves by Yerevan have increasingly been seen in Russia, 
which dominates the CSTO, as “unfriendly.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry last week 
accused Pashinian’s administration of systematically “destroying” 
Russian-Armenian relations, a claim dismissed in Yerevan. Tensions between Armenia and Russia rose further after Azerbaijan’s September 
19-20 military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh that led to the exodus of the 
region’s virtually entire ethnic Armenian population. Armenia, in particular, 
blamed Russian peacekeepers deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh under a 2020 ceasefire 
agreement between Moscow, Baku and Yerevan for failing to protect the local 
Armenians. The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it “regrets” Pashinian’s latest decision not to 
attend the upcoming CSTO summit, while a spokesperson for Alyaksandr Lukashenka, 
the formal host of the gathering in Minsk, said that during their phone call 
earlier this week the Belarusian leader warned the Armenian prime minister 
against making “hasty decisions”, suggesting that he “should seriously think 
over his next steps that could be aimed at disintegration.”
Despite the deepening rift in relations between Yerevan and Moscow, Pashinian 
has so far announced no plans to pull his country out of the CSTO or demand the 
withdrawal of Russian troops stationed in Armenia. In the November 14 interview with Armenia’s Public Television Security Council 
Secretary Grigorian repeated what Pashinian and other Armenian officials have 
said before, saying that “it is not Armenia that is quitting the CSTO, but it is 
the CSTO that is quitting the region.”
Armenia, UK Discuss Defense Cooperation As ‘Strategic Dialogue’ Commences
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and British Minister for Europe Leo 
Docherty during their meeting in London, November 13, 2023. Armenia and the United Kingdom discussed defense cooperation among “a range of 
global and regional issues of mutual concern” as part of a “Strategic Dialogue” 
launched during Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan’s visit to London this 
week. According to a joint statement issued by the parties following the first session 
on November 13, it was “an opportunity to mark the strong cooperation and 
friendship between our two democracies.”
“With the increase globally in threats to democratic values, human rights, rule 
of law and the freedoms we strive to protect our citizens, working together on 
issues of mutual concern։ it is more important than ever not only to build trade 
and stability, but also to protect our shared core values. We reaffirmed the 
aspiration to build our partnership over the coming years,” the statement said. Among the ways in which Armenia and the UK can work together in the future the 
parties indicated several major areas, including governance and rule of law, 
defense cooperation, trade and economic ties. According to the statement, the UK “will soon begin working to support Armenia’s 
border management capacities to tackle security and migration issues.”
“[It is] Armenia-UK defense cooperation, which continues to expand with 
increased numbers of personnel from the Armenian military and Ministry of 
Defense, and police (Ministry of Internal Affairs) personnel receiving English 
Language training instruction, as well as places on UK senior and junior command 
and leadership courses, and multi-national peace-keeping and mine-awareness 
packages,” the statement said. “The Ministers agreed on the absolute necessity of the establishment of peace 
and stability in the South Caucasus based on the mutual recognition of 
sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders on the basis 
of the Alma Ata 1991 Declaration, and the opening of regional connectivity links 
based on full respect of each countries’ sovereignty and jurisdiction,” it added. UK/Armenia - Opening of the new building of Armenia's Embassy in the United 
Kingdom, London, November 13, 2023. Apart from holding talks with British Minister for Europe Leo Docherty, as part 
of his November 13-14 visit Armenian Foreign Minister Mirzoyan also attended the 
inauguration of a new Armenian embassy building in London. Speaking at the 
ceremony, Mirzoyan described it as a “historic moment.”
“We not only open a building, but lay new foundations for deepening our 
relations. We are reaffirming our commitments to deepen our political dialogue, 
our economic ties, our cultural ties,” the Armenian minister said. U․S․ ‘Developing Record’ Of What Happened In Nagorno-Karabakh
        • Heghine Buniatian
James O’Brien (file photo)
The United States is developing a record of what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh 
and is working on support for Armenia, James O’Brien, Assistant Secretary at the 
U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, announced 
during a congressional hearing on Wednesday. During the hearing on “The Future of Nagorno-Karabakh” held by the U.S. House 
Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Europe, the high-ranking diplomat 
noted that the subject of investigation is not only what happened in 
Nagorno-Karabakh during September when the region’s virtually entire ethnic 
Armenian population fled their homes within a matter of days after a lightening 
military operation launched by Azerbaijan, but also during the months preceding 
it. “We have commissioned independent investigators, we have our own investigators 
working in the field. There is information available from international 
non-governmental organizations and other investigators. And as we develop the 
record of what happened, we will be completely open about what we are finding. I 
can’t put a timeline on this investigation, but we will inform you as we go 
forward,” O’Brien said. “The second thing we are working on is support for Armenia… I am very impressed 
by the Armenian government’s commitment to reforms and diversifying 
relationships that it has – economic, political, energy and security – 
particularly in the Trans-Atlantic community. And I think we owe it to the 
people of Armenia to help them through this difficult situation so that those 
choices they have made very bravely are able to help them to make them have a 
more secure, stable and prosperous future,” the U.S. diplomat added. Speaking on behalf of the Department of State, O’Brien said that Washington 
insists that Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians have complete access to the territory, 
on the protection of the property and culture and that they receive adequate 
information “so that they can make real choice about their future.”
Members of the Subcommittee also talked about the settlement of relations 
between Armenia and Azerbaijan, emphasizing that the countries hindering the 
process, including Russia, should be kept away from the negotiations. Presenting what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh, Congressman Bill Keating said that 
despite months of diplomatic talks that had led to “significant progress”, in 
September 2023 Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev “decided to break with the 
internationally accepted and lawful diplomatic path, instead opting for the use 
of military force in Nagorno-Karabakh.”
“As a result of Azerbaijan’s unacceptable military action over 100,000 ethnic 
Armenians have fled Nagorno-Karabakh, resettling in Armenia and leaving their 
personal belongings and their livelihoods behind them. I strongly believe we 
must provide humanitarian and economic assistance to displaced people in Armenia 
and ensure accountability for any potential crimes committed against those 
fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh or those who are choosing to remain there,” Keating 
underscored. U.S. Envoy Joins EU Mission Patrol In Northeastern Armenia
U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Kristina A. Kvien joins the EUMA on patrol to areas 
of the Tavush Province. . United States Ambassador Kristina A. Kvien has joined the European Union’s 
mission (EUMA) on patrol to border areas in Armenia’s northeastern Tavush 
Province, the EUMA said in an X post on Wednesday. The EUMA published photographs showing Kvien’s visit, saying that it was 
facilitated by the mission’s Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Ijevan. The EUMA currently consisting of 100 or so observers and experts was launched at 
the request of the Armenian government in late 2022 with the stated aim of 
preventing or reducing ceasefire violations along the border with Azerbaijan. Since its deployment the mission has carried out more than a thousand patrols 
along the restive Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The EUMA operates from six FOBs 
situated in towns of Armenia’s Syunik, Vayots Dzor, Gegharkunik and Tavush 
provinces. The Azerbaijani takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh in September this year has raised 
more fears in Yerevan that Azerbaijan will invade Armenia to open a land 
corridor to its Nakhichevan exclave. Azerbaijan has also publicly raised the 
issue of “Soviet-era exclaves” in Armenia. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian urged Western powers to prevent Baku 
from “provoking a new war in the region” when he addressed the European 
Parliament in October. EU foreign ministers on Monday gave the green light to a proposal to beef up the 
border-monitoring mission in Armenia. When the measure is submitted to the 
European Commission it will need to come up with a proposal on how the EUMA can 
be expanded. The decisions of the European Commission, in turn, must be ratified 
by the 27 EU member states. Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2023 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.