Author: Emil Lazarian

 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.

Azerbaijan Suspected in Hacking of Armenian Officials With Israeli NSO Spyware

Thirteen Armenian officials, human rights activists, journalists and academics had their phones infected with the Israeli NSO Group’s spyware after recent fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has reportedly used Pegasus in the past against its own citizens

Oded Yaron

Thirteen government officials, human rights activists, journalists and academics from Armenia fell victim to spying by a foreign country using Pegasus spyware from the Israeli NSO Group, a new report from Amnesty International’s Security Lab and The Citizen Lab released on Thursday found.

Among the victims were the spokeswoman of Armenia’s Foreign Ministry, who is now an NGO worker, and then-Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) of Armenia, who investigated suspicions of war crimes against Azerbaijan.

The researchers found circumstantial evidence linking the espionage to the war in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, and suspect that the Azerbaijan is behind the hacking.

The roots of the affair go back to November 2021, after Apple sent the first round of warnings to some of those attacked, telling them they had been the victims of a cyberattack by a foreign nation.

The forensic examination of their phones was conducted by The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Access Now digital civil rights organization, Amnesty Tech and CyberHUB-AM, the emergency cyber response center for civil society organizations in Armenia.

Azerbaijan has previously been suspected of deploying Pegasus spyware against journalists and civil society activists in its own country, after the infections were exposed in July 2021 as part of the Pegasus project, led by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty, and in cooperation with Haaretz-TheMarker.

President Ilham Aliyev has total control over the country, and his rule has a long history of arrests and repression of civil rights and opposition activists. In 2017, the U.S. State Department released a harsh report on the state of the LGBTQ community in Azerbaijan, which suffers from persecution, murder and disappearances, arrests, torture and discrimination.

NSO was not the only Israeli company that supplied advanced military and intelligence systems to Azerbaijan. Israel has consolidated its strategic ties with Azerbaijan in recent years, exporting billions of dollars of arms to the country, which shares a border with its regional foe Iran.

But this time the targets of the spying were Armenians. Forensic evidence and the identity of the victims indicate that the government of Azerbaijan was likely behind the spying campaign.

The researchers said the spyware campaign began as a result of the tensions in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a disputed enclave with a mostly ethnic Armenian population and a separatist government in the heart of Azerbaijan. During the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, also known as the 44-day War, in 2020, Azerbaijan captured large amounts of territory and the defeat led to a severe political crisis in Armenia.

A few days after the cease-fire agreement, it was reported that Armenia’s National Security Service had thwarted an assassination attempt against the Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The prime minister then dissolved the parliament and announced new elections in June 2021, which he won.

“We identified the first wave of infections in May to July 2021 at the time that Armenia was in a severe constitutional and political crisis over the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh,” Natalia Krapiva, the tech legal counsel for Access Now told Haaretz.

The talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia under the auspices of Russia continued during that period, and the prime minister’s resignation only made the political uncertainty even worse. Acting Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazyan resigned at the end of May, after he harshly criticized his own government’s policies. That same day, the telephone of Anna Naghdalyan, the then-spokeswoman of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, was infected, and she was not the only one.

A week later, all of the foreign minister’s deputies announced their resignations. Twenty-four hours earlier, according to the Citizen Labs report, Naghdalyan’s phone was infected for a second time. “I had a lot of important information, professional and also personal,” Naghdalyan told Haaretz. “I don’t know how much information they obtained, but this case proves that none of us are safe. Such gadgets have become an inseparable part of our lives – and such discoveries cause a deep feeling of insecurity.”

Among the victims whose phones were found to be infected with the Pegasus spyware were two Armenian academics specializing in international relations and Azerbaijan, and two United Nations employees, whose identities were not revealed.

Kristine Grigoryan, the Human Rights Defender of Armenia until January 2023, told Haaretz that additional infections occurred close to later flare-ups in Nagorno-Karabakh. Grigoryan worked in the office of Armenia’s human rights ombudsman, an accredited national institute of the United Nations, and she was responsible for investigating suspicions of war crimes.

She was tasked with the role after videos circulated in 2022 showing Azerbaijan commandos killing Armenian prisoners of war.

One of the clips depicts the abuse of a female Armenian sniper who was captured and later murdered. “She had three children,” said Grigoryan. “The family came to my office and begged for us to stop the distribution of the videos, but we couldn’t do anything.”

Due to her special role in investigating Azerbaijani war crimes, Grigoryan became a well-known figure in the media – and as a result was also the target Azerbaijan’s spying, said the researchers. In October 2022, she was notified by Apple that her phone had been infected. In December, her phone was infected a second time.

“Helping attack those already experiencing violence is a despicable act, even for a company like NSO Group,” said Natalia Krapiva from Access Now. “Inserting harmful spyware technology into the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict shows a complete disregard for safety and welfare, and truly unmasks how depraved priorities can be. People must come before profit — it’s time to disarm spyware globally.”

NSO Group responded to Haaretz’ questions:

While NSO is unable to confirm or deny the identity of its customers, past reports proved that various groups continue to produce inconclusive reports that are unable to differentiate between the various cyber tools in use. As always, these groups refuse to share their reports with the company, hence we cannot address any specific allegations we didn’t see.

NSO has the industry’s leading compliance and human rights policy and as always will investigate all credible allegations of misuse. Past NSO investigations have resulted in the termination of multiple contracts regarding the improper use of our technologies.

NSO has repeatedly called for a global regulatory cyber intelligence framework to address the responsibility of governmental operators to prevent technological misuse.

Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, the Head of Amnesty Tech Security Lab, responded to The comapny’s claims about the report:

“NSO Group refuses to engage with or acknowledge the overwhelming weight of forensic evidence proving ongoing Pegasus abuses published by Amnesty International, Citizen Lab and civil society partners. Time and again this research been later validated by subsequent official investigations, government statements and major technology vendors.”

“NSO Group’s evidently inadequate human rights policy is little comfort to the journalists and human rights defenders who continue to be victimized by the company’s spyware

almost a decade after abuses were confirmed. We urgently need a ban on these most invasive forms of spyware to stop the ongoing crisis enabled by this industry.”

The Azerbaijan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israel’s Defense Ministry have not responded to requests from Haaretz.