10:15,
YEREVAN, MAY 30, ARMENPRESS. Slovenia’s National Assembly President Urška Klakočar Zupančič has arrived in Armenia on an official visit.
The Vice President of the National Assembly of Armenia Hakob Arshakyan welcomed Urška Klakočar Zupančič at the Zvartnots Airport in Yerevan.
The President of the National Assembly of Slovenia will have meetings with President of Armenia Vahagn Khachaturyan, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and President of the National Assembly Alen Simonyan.
10:47,
YEREVAN, MAY 30, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijani authorities have destroyed a World War II memorial in Berdzor, Speaker of Parliament of Armenia Alen Simonyan tweeted and posted images.
“I wonder whether there’ll be a reaction to the destruction of the memorial dedicated to the victims of the Great Patriotic War, whether there’ll be coverage or talk shows where patriots will tear up for desecrating our great victory. Or perhaps, as usual, there will simply be a call to maintain restraint? Double standards, stupidity and greed, and then a surprised look on the face asking what and when has gone wrong,” Simonyan tweeted.
10:54,
YEREVAN, MAY 30, ARMENPRESS. The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense has again falsely accused the Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army of breaching the ceasefire, the Nagorno Karabakh Ministry of Defense warned on Tuesday.
“The statement released by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense accusing the Defense Army units of opening fire overnight May 29-30 at the Azerbaijani positions deployed in the occupied territories of the Askeran, Shushi and Karvajar regions of the Republic of Artsakh is disinformation,” the Nagorno Karabakh Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
11:46,
YEREVAN, MAY 30, ARMENPRESS. The volume of foreign direct investments made in Armenia in 2022 stands at nearly one billion dollars, Minister of Economy Vahan Kerobyan said in parliament during budget discussions on May 30.
“In terms of investments, according to interim data, last year we had 1 trillion 845 billion drams of gross accumulation, while the volume of foreign direct investments amounted to one billion dollars for the first time in the history of Armenia, about 5,13% of our GDP,” Kerobyan said.
The government had envisaged a 6% foreign direct investment-GDP ratio, while the investments-GDP indictor was planned to be 25%. Kerobyan said the latter stands at 21,7% according to interim data. The minister said the final data is expected to be much higher when the complete information is available. Recording a 25% investment-GDP ratio would mean that the government’s goal of transforming the consumer economy to an investments-based economy is being implemented.
Armenia’s prime minister looks set to officially accept Azerbaijan’s territory as encompassing the long-disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. A peace deal between the two countries could happen as soon as June 1.
After decades of tension, clashes, and wars, Armenia and Azerbaijan appear to be the closest they have ever been to concluding an official peace following Armenia’s prime minister’s explicit recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory.
“Armenia recognises Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity of 86,600 square kilometres, assuming that Azerbaijan recognises Armenia’s territorial integrity as 29,800 square kilometres,” said Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan on May 22.
“Those 86,600 square kilometres also include Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Nagorno-Karabakh has a majority ethnic Armenian population but is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan. The Armenians who live there do so under the de facto, unrecognised government of the Republic of Artsakh (the Armenian name for the region) and reject Azerbaijan’s sovereignty.
While Pashinyan has been hinting that he is willing to recognise Azerbaijan’s claim to Nagorno-Karabakh for over a year, his statement triggered outrage across Armenia, amongst Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the global Armenian diaspora. Support for the Republic of Artsakh has long been a third rail in Armenian politics.
The National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh convened a special session on May 22 and adopted a statement reading, “Any statement by Nikol Pashinyan ignoring the sovereignty of the Republic of Artsakh, our people’s right to self-determination and the fact of its implementation, as well as any document drafted on that basis is unacceptable and worthless to us.”
The statement also cites a 1992 decision by the Supreme Council of the Republic of Armenia which ruled, “it is unacceptable for the Republic of Armenia to consider any international or interstate document which refers to the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as part of Azerbaijan.”
The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh are protected by Russian peacekeepers under the terms of the trilateral 2020 ceasefire agreement that ended the Second Karabakh War.
During that war, Azerbaijan reclaimed large portions of the territory controlled by the breakaway state of Artsakh, including Nagorno-Karabakh’s second largest city of Shusha. Many ethnic Armenians fled the region for Armenia.
Those remaining in Nagorno-Karabakh believe Azerbaijan’s multi-month blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the only route to Armenia, is meant to squeeze them out. The blockade has now been formalised as an Azerbaijani checkpoint.
“Whoever does not want to become our citizen, the road is not closed, it is open,” said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. “They can leave, they can go by themselves, no one will hinder them.”
Karabakh’s gas operator says Azerbaijan has blocked the region’s gas supplies since March. The region has largely depended on the Sarsang Reservoir for electricity, but that has now reached critically low levels—leaving the region with both an energy crisis and environmental catastrophe.
While Armenia has long advocated for the rights of Armenians in Karabakh—and indeed, Pashinyan clarified his recognition of Karabakh as Azerbaijani was conditional upon guarantees for the rights of Armenians living in the region—incursions into its territory by the Azerbaijani military in May 2021 and September 2022 has forced it to the negotiating table.
Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), which also includes Russia, but the alliance declined to defend Armenia militarily, likely due to the close ties of its Central Asian members for Azerbaijan and Russia and Belarus’s preoccupation with the war in Ukraine.
Let down by his treaty allies, Pashinyan has repeatedly criticised the alliance and most recently said he was “not ruling out” the possibility of Armenia withdrawing from the CSTO if Armenia determines “the CSTO has withdrawn from Armenia” at the same May 22 press conference as his comments recognising Karabakh as Azerbaijan.
Sensing a decline in Russia’s influence, Western leaders have been eager to play an increased role in the peace process and increase their diplomatic presence in the region.
Pashinyan met with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev on the sidelines of the first European Political Community (EPC) Summit in Prague in October 2022 and agreed to facilitate a civilian European Union mission to their shared border.
They met again in February 2023 at the 59th Munich Security Conference, where United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken mediated talks concerning the blockade of the Lachin Corridor. Blinken also held talks with the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in New York in September 2022 and for four days in Washington DC in early May of 2023.
Pashinyan and Aliyev met again in Brussels on May 14 with European Council President Charles Michel and discussed border delimitation, reopening transport and economic links, and the release of two Azerbaijani soldiers captured in Armenia.
Russia is still interested in an active role in the peace process, and Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Pashinyan and Aliyev for talks in Sochi in November 2022 and most recently in Moscow on May 25. All sides seemed optimistic after the May 25 meeting, with Putin saying, “There are still unresolved questions, but in my opinion, and we discussed this with our Azeri and our Armenian colleagues, they are of a purely technical nature.”
Both Pashinyan and Aliyev reiterated their mutual recognition of the other country’s territorial integrity. Aliyev, who had previously threatened to open a ‘Zangezur Corridor’ between mainland Azerbaijan and its exclave of Nakhchivan by force, walked back these comments.
“I want to say that we have no such [territorial] claims [on Armenia] … As for the word ‘corridor,’ which I used, I used (it) in the same way about the North-South corridor, in the same way, this word is used about the East-West corridor, The word ‘corridor’ is in no way an encroachment on someone’s territory. It is an international term,” Aliyev said.
The leaders are set to meet again at the Second EPC Summit in Moldova on June 1.
“On June 1 in Chișinău we hope that finally a peace treaty can be signed,” said Baku’s envoy to France Leyla Abdoullayeva.
Following Abdoullayeva’s comments, the Armenia Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the signing of a peace treaty is not included in the agenda of the meeting to be held in Chișinău. Several analysts and journalists have predicted the signing will occur at the Third EPC Summit in Granada in October instead.
Nonetheless, for the topic of discussion to go from the cessation of hostilities to the date for a treaty signing ceremony is unmistakable progress.
23:40,
YEREVAN, MAY 28, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his reelection to a third term.
“Congratulations to President RTErdogan on his re-election. Looking forward to continuing working together towards full normalisation of relations between our countries,” PM Pashinyan said on Twitter.
Turkish election authorities announced that Erdogan has defeated Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a runoff election.
Erdogan claimed 52.14% of the vote to Kilicdaroglu’s 47.86%,
10:31,
YEREVAN, MAY 29, ARMENPRESS. The top 1000 taxpayers in Armenia paid 113,4% more taxes in January-March of 2023 compared to the same period of 2018, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told lawmakers at a joint committee session for preliminary debates of the 2022 government budget report.
“The policy towards major taxpayers has changed significantly. 113,4% more taxes were collected from top 1000 taxpayers in January-March 2023 compared to the same period of 2018. The major taxpayers paid more than twice in taxes compared to the first three months of 2018. This is important for us to see that we are bringing not only the small businesses to the taxation framework but also the major ones,” the PM said.
Furthermore, the total amount of the taxes collected from the 100 top taxpayers equals to 55,7% of the entire amount of taxes paid by the top 1000 taxpayers.
11:43,
YEREVAN, MAY 29, ARMENPRESS. One of the topics discussed last week during the Armenia-Russia-Azerbaijan trilateral talks was the humanitarian situation in Nagorno Karabakh and the illegal closure of the Lachin Corridor, PM Nikol Pashinyan said on May 29.
Armenia discussed the issue with Russia as well, and the results of the discussion are unsatisfactory, Pashinyan said.
Speaking at a joint parliamentary committee session for preliminary debates of the 2022 government budget report, Pashinyan said that the military-political situation in the region remains rather tense.
“Moreover, this is related not only with our difficult relations, but also the ongoing global processes, the events taking place in the relations of Russia, Ukraine, we are now receiving very alarming reports on the events taking place on the border of Iran and Afghanistan, and so on. We have adopted a peace agenda, a strategy of peace, and we are doing everything possible to bring this agenda to life,” Pashinyan said.
Speaking about the trilateral negotiations held in Moscow last week, the Armenian Prime Minister said that one of the topics related to the humanitarian situation in Nagorno Karabakh and the illegal closure of the Lachin Corridor. “We’ve discussed this topic also with our Russian partners. I can’t say that the results of this discussion were satisfactory. We must note that this is a very regrettable situation. And I also had a public occasion to say that the closure of Lachin Corridor took place basically right in front of, and in the presence of Russian peacekeepers, which is certainly very concerning. We will continue our discussions, including with our Russian partners, in the direction of resolving this situation,” Pashinyan said.
Lachin Corridor – the only road linking Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia and the rest of the world – has been blocked by Azerbaijan since 12 December 2022. The United Nations’ highest court – the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – ordered Azerbaijan on 22 February 2023 to “take all steps at its disposal” to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions.
Azerbaijan has so far ignored the order.
Furthermore, under the 9 November 2020 trilateral statement – the Nagorno Karabakh 2020 ceasefire agreement, control of Lachin Corridor should be exercised by Russian peacekeepers.
11:57,
YEREVAN, MAY 29, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said that one of the items discussed at the trilateral talks in Moscow was the opening of regional connections.
PM Pashinyan said he reiterated that Armenia is ready to open the regional connections under sovereignty and jurisdiction of the countries through which they pass.
“This is about the connections underscored under clause 9 of the 9 November 2020 trilateral statements. We are ready for the swift reopening of the connections under sovereignty and jurisdiction of the countries, and we have emphasized this. We are trying to work on the opening of railway infrastructures. We are eager and interested in the opening of regional connections. I believe we have a rather flexible and constructive position here and we are really ready for the opening of connections, and I am convinced that when this happens it will be an additional boost for Armenia’s economic development. Unfortunately, the solution of this issue doesn’t solely depend on us. If it were to depend on us, it would have been solved long ago,” the Armenian PM said at a joint parliamentary committee hearing on the 2022 budget report.
13:22,
YEREVAN, MAY 29, ARMENPRESS. Armenia provided a total of 176 billion drams in loans to Nagorno Karabakh in 2022, Finance Minister Vahe Hovhannisyan told lawmakers at a joint committee session for preliminary debates of the 2022 government budget report.
He said the figure was higher than planned and is an unprecedented volume of support.
The 2022 budget was executed with a 179,5 billion dram deficit, instead of the projected 22,9 billion.
Speaking about the deficit, Hovhannisyan said that the bond issuance plan was conducted in full at 252 billion drams. 165 billion drams in loans were received from international organizations.
“We’ve carried out approximately 100 billion dram in repayment. And the loan given to Artsakh comprised 176 billion drams, which was more than planned, such volume of support was never given to Nagorno Karabakh. As a result we have state debt, which stood at 4 trillion 186 billion drams as of December 31, in dollars it stands at 10 billion 637 million dollars,” Hovhannisyan said.