Author: Emil Lazarian

This article was first published on OC Media. An edited version is republished here under a content partnership agreement. 

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Armenia and Georgia following the news that Alexey Navalny, 47, well-known Russian opposition figure and Putin’s long term critic died in prison under suspicious circumstances on February 16, 2024.

In December 2020, Navalany was poisoned with what was later confirmed by German doctors to be a military-grade nerve agent from the Novichok family of chemical weapons. The opposition politician survived the poisoning and, after receiving treatment in Germany, decided to return to Russia, despite knowing he would be arrested if not on the spot, then at a later time. On January 17, 2021, Navalny was arrested after landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. At the time of his death, he was serving a 19-year prison sentence in a maximum-security prison north of the Arctic Circle, nicknamed the “Polar Wolf” prison and notorious for its ill-reputation over the treatment of prisoners serving time there.

As such, when the Russian Penitentiary Service announced Navalny’s death, claiming the opposition politician died of thromboembolism or a dislodged blood cot, questions over the actual cause of death and Kremlin’s involvement in it spread quickly.

That his family and team have not been able to retrieve the body of Navalny puts authorities under the spotlight over suspicions that they are trying to cover up the real reason behind his death. According to Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson:

In a separate interview with TV Rain, Yarmush said: “There’s no doubt that this murder was planned. We don’t currently have any information except for the colony’s official confirmation of his death.”

When Navalny’s mother showed up at the morgue on February 19, she and the team of lawyers accompanying her were prevented from seeing Navalny’s body:

Alexey’s mother and his lawyers arrived at the morgue early in the morning. They were not allowed to go in. One of the lawyers was literally pushed out. When the staff was asked if Alexey’s body was there, they did not answer

— Kira Yarmysh (@Kira_Yarmysh) 

On February 20, Yarmush wrote, “The investigators told the lawyers and Alexey’s mother that they would not give them the body. The body will be under some sort of ‘chemical examination’ for another 14 days.”

Meanwhile, scores of Russians continue to express their grief at home, even at the cost of being arrested.

At the time of writing this story, at least 396 people have been detained at events across 39 Russian cities since Navalny’s death, according to the Russian human rights group OVD-Info.

For Russians living abroad, including in Armenia and Georgia, it has been easier to demonstrate their anger.

In the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, as well as in the city of Batumi and in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, Russians chanted Navalny’s name, anti-war and anti-Putin slogans.

“I’m angry; I’m mostly angry, then sad,” one demonstrator named Nikolay told the news outlet OC Media, adding that he was grateful that in Armenia, he was able to express his feelings openly.

“We expected it, but the feelings are still anger, rage, grief,” said another demonstrator, Mikhail Yershov.

In Tbilisi, a demonstration was held outside the Russian Interests Section at the Swiss Embassy. Georgia severed diplomatic relations with Russia after the 2008 August War. Navalny was among many Russians who supported the invasion at the time, however he publicly apologized for it five years later.

Memorial to Alexei Navalny in Tbilisi near the Russian Interests Section at the Swiss Embassy. People have been coming for the third day to lay flowers in memory of the politician after the news of Navalny’s death in the colony. Activists assembled an installation in the shape of a heart made of flowersç Video: TV Rain

One protester who asked to remain anonymous told OC Media that Navalny’s death came as a shock to her.

“What brought me [here]? It’s shock because everything has its limits […] he was killed, like Boris Nemtsov,” she said, adding she was worried for the fate of other political prisoners in Russia.

Boris Nemtsov was a liberal politician and ardent critic of Vladimir Putin who was gunned down in the street near the Kremlin in Moscow in 2015.

Despite the growing rift between Armenia and Russia, Armenian authorities have so far remained silent, as have those in Azerbaijan.

In Azerbaijan, there was just one memorial reported:

Hüseyn Javid was a renowned Azerbaijani poet and playwright of the early 20th century who was a victim of Stalin’s repressions in 1937, and who died in Siberia as a result.

On February 20, ambassadors of the United Kingdom and the United States also paid tribute to Navalny by the same statue:

In Georgia, President Salome Zourabichvili was quick to speak out, calling Navalny’s death a “tragedy for all democracy and human rights defenders.”

Mamuka Mdinaradze, the ruling Georgian Dream party’s parliamentary leader, said Navalny was Putin’s latest victim when asked a question by a journalist before moving to complain about Georgia’s own politics, including the opposition United Nation Movement’s time in power before 2012, when prisoner deaths weren’t unheard of.

The speaker of parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, preferred not to comment when asked a similar question.

Opposition leaders in Georgia were more outspoken.

The United National Movement, in a statement, praised Navalny for returning back to Russia “to fight against Putin’s dictatorship and murderous regime” despite the danger to his life.

The party’s founder and Georgia’s former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who is currently serving a prison sentence for abuse of power, wrote, “Navalny is gone. Am I the next one on Putin’s death row?”

The leader of the opposition Droa Party, Elene Khoshtaria, wrote on X that “Navalny’s death was a testament to the true, brutal, callous nature of Russia and Putin.”

Giorgi Gakharia, former Prime Minister and now leader of the For Georgia party, expressed condolences to Navalny’s family and friends on X, adding the opposition politician’s death was “a poignant symbol of Russia’s enduring modernized totalitarianism.”

https://globalvoices.org/2024/02/20/anger-and-grief-as-russians-in-armenia-and-georgia-mourn-navalnys-death/

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met in Munich on February 17 with the mediation of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. 

According to Azerbaijan's APA news agency, Scholz left the room at some point and the meeting continued in bilateral format. 

Afterwards, the sides expressed satisfaction with the meeting but offered few specifics on a way forward. 

It was the first meeting between the two leaders since last July, though they did have a brief encounter at a CIS summit in December. 

One of the main reasons for their failure to meet has been disagreement over who should mediate, particularly since Azerbaijan's seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh in September and the exodus of the region's Armenian population. 

Armenia has favored mediation by the EU and U.S. while Azerbaijan first expressed preference for authoritarian regional powers Russia and Turkey, and then began rejecting all outside mediation. 

The sides have met in bilateral format several times, however, to discuss border delimitation in November and agree a prisoner exchange in December.

Armenia has not explicitly rejected bilateral talks on a comprehensive peace deal, though its preference for Western mediation is evident as it seeks closer ties with the EU and U.S. and attempts to move away from its traditional strategic partner Russia. 

The Aliyev-Pashinyan-Scholz meeting took place just four days after Azerbaijan killed four Armenian soldiers in what it called a "revenge operation" for the wounding of an Azerbaijani serviceman. 

And the previous day, February 16, Pashinyan had said that his government's "analysis" showed that Azerbaijan was preparing for a full-scale war. 

After the meeting, on February 18, Pashinyan said the two countries' foreign ministers would meet soon for peace talks. It is not clear whether or not any mediators will be present.

Aliyev, meanwhile, called his meeting with Pashinyan "constructive and useful." He declared that there is "de facto peace in the region" and expressed readiness to sign a peace treaty. 

At the same time, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry in a February 18 statement reiterated Baku's demand that Armenia revise its constitution and other laws to remove all reference to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Following the Munich meeting, Olaf Scholz stated that the sides agreed to resolve their differences "without violence." No details about any specific agreements were made public. The meeting took place within the framework of the Munich Security Conference. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Aliyev and Pashinyan separately, expressing support for the peace process. 

While the two countries' leaders maintain that the main principles of the peace treaty have been agreed, the sides voice disagreement over almost all of the parts of the deal, including the opening of the transport links and border delimitation/demarcation. 

The mentioned principles include Armenia and Azerbaijan recognizing each other's territorial integrity, with the latest USSR and Almaty declaration maps being used for the demarcation of the borders and opening of the regional infrastructure based on the respective country's legislation and jurisdiction. Baku, however, demands a corridor through Armenia connecting mainland Azerbaijan with the Nakhchivan to be controlled by Russian border troops and without Armenian customs or border checks. 

Armenia said on Tuesday that four of its soldiers were killed by Azerbaijani fire along the heavily militarized border, the first fatal incident since they began negotiating a deal to end more than 30 years of intermittent war last year. 

Fatal exchanges have been common along the closed, roughly 1,000 km (621 mile) frontier since 1988 when Armenia and Azerbaijan first went to war over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, but the situation had calmed amid peace talks in recent months.

Tuesday's incident was the biggest since hundreds died when Azerbaijan retook Karabakh in September, prompting an exodus of the region's ethnic Armenian population.

Armenia's Defence Ministry said in a statement that the four soldiers had been killed and another was wounded at a combat post near the southern Armenian village of Nerkin Hand. Azerbaijan's border service said in a statement that it had staged "a revenge operation" for a "provocation" it said Armenian forces had committed the day before.

"The military and political leadership of Armenia is fully responsible for the incident," it said, adding that future provocations would face more serious measures.

Azerbaijan's Defence Ministry said Armenian forces on Monday evening fired at Baku's positions along a northwestern section of the border, around 400 km (250 miles) from Nerkin Hand. Armenia denied the incident.

In a statement, Armenian ambassador-at-large Edmon Marukyan accused Azerbaijan of "criminal, aggressive behaviour", and said Baku wanted a pretext to attack Armenian forces.

The Kremlin, which is formally allied to Armenia but also has close ties with Azerbaijan, called for restraint on both sides. A Russian peacekeeping contingent remains in Karabakh and its border guards help patrol Armenia's frontiers.

The Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan had a mostly ethnic Armenian population which won de facto independence after a lengthy war during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But Azerbaijan in September retook Karabakh in a lightning offensive, prompting a rapid exodus of almost all of the territory's 120,000 Armenians, and a renewed push from both sides for a deal to end the conflict.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have said they want to sign a peace treaty, but disagree over issues including precise demarcation of their border and control over several small territorial enclaves.

Azerbaijan also wants a customs-free transport corridor through Armenian territory, connecting Azerbaijan's mainland with its Nakhichevan exclave. Armenia has said it must retain control over any transport links on its soil.

Talks have in recent months appeared to stagnate, with both sides accusing the other of sabotaging the diplomatic process.

(Reuters) 

The European Union's top diplomat on Tuesday condemned Azerbaijan's "disproportionate" response to alleged shooting by Armenian forces the day before.

"The Armenian shooting of the Azerbaijani soldier yesterday was deplorable, but the Azerbaijani response today seems to be disproportionate," Josep Borrell said.

Borrell was speaking at a press briefing in Brussels with Armenian foreign minister Ararat Mirzoyan to mark the fifth meeting of the EU-Armenia Partnership Council, first held in 2018.

The meeting covered the "full spectrum" of EU-Armenian relations, Borrell said. "We discussed the regional situation and the Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization process, unhappily including the latest incident at the border."

Armenian and Azerbaijani troops exchanged fire on Monday and Tuesday in the latest skirmish of a long-running conflict the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

On Tuesday, the European Commission announced it was allocating €5.5 million in new humanitarian aid to support Armenians displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh.

The EU and Armenian delegations also discussed the potential for a "dialogue" on liberalizing the visa regime between the EU and Armenia, political reforms and human rights, as well as economic and trade cooperation.

"Armenia believes that all the necessary requirements have been met and it is time to launch the Armenia-EU visa liberalisation dialogue," Mirzoyan said. "It is a choice to be made to bring our peoples closer and to provide them with tangible outcomes of our cooperation."

The EU-Armenia Partnership Council is the product of an agreement signed in 2017 to deepen cooperation on a broad array of matters such as security, arms control, human rights, the environment, energy, migration, and combatting organized crime, terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking.

In January 2023, EU member states agreed to establish a civilian mission to patrol and monitor the the region of Armenia near the Azerbaijani border, amid hostilities between the two countries.

In September, the EU condemned Azerbaijan's military campaign against ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In November, Mirzoyan said Armenians "have European aspirations" in a speech welcoming the EU's decision to open membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova and to recognize Georgia, Armenia's neighbour, as an official candidate for EU membership.

But the EU and Armenia have taken different positions on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While the EU has provided money and weapons for the Ukrainian war effort, Armenia has abstained on UN General Assembly resolutions against the invasion.

Armenia is also a member of the Common Security Treaty Organization, a Russian-led military alliance.

Armenia has however sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine, which in September provoked the Russian government to summon the Armenian ambassador in Moscow.