Tuesday,
Azeri Drone ‘Shot Down In Karabakh’
Nagorno Karabakh -- An official photograph that purportedly shows the wreckage
of an Azerbaijani military drone shot dow by the Karabakh Armenian army,
September 25, 2019.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian-backed army claimed to have shot down an Azerbaijani
military drone on Tuesday.
In a statement, the Defense Army said the Israeli-made drone was hit by one of
its air-defense units early in the afternoon immediately after entering its
airspace over a southern section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani “line of contact”
around Karabakh. It promised to release photographs of the wreckage the unmanned
aerial vehicle (UAV) “later on.”
The statement also said that Azerbaijani warplanes, combat helicopters and UAVs
have carried out more frequent flights near the heavily fortified frontline of
late. It claimed that Azerbaijani drones have also repeatedly attempted to cross
into Armenian-controlled territory “for intelligence-gathering purposes” and
urged Baku to avoid such “provocative steps.”
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry did not immediately react to the claim.
An Israeli company, Aeronautics Defense Systems, manufactures several types of
Orbiter UAVs, including light-weight systems designed for reconnaissance
missions and heavier attack drones.
The Karabakh army did not specify which one of them it shot down. It had claimed
to have destroyed an Orbiter 2 reconnaisance drone in September 2019.
According to Israeli media reports, Aeronautics was working on a potential $20
million deal with Baku when Azerbaijani officials asked its specialists to
demonstrate one of its “kamikaze” drones on a Karabakh Armenian army position in
the summer of 2017. The reports said two Aeronautics employees refused to carry
out the attack but higher-ranking executives of the company agreed to do so.
The scandal led Israeli authorities to suspend Aeronautics’ export license. But
they lifted the ban on attack drone exports to Azerbaijan in January 2019.
Aeronautics reportedly opened an office in Baku a few months later.
Government Vows To Repatriate More Armenians
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia -- Deputy Foreign Minister Avet Adonts gives a press conference in
Yerevan.
The government will help to evacuate all Armenian nationals trying to return to
Armenia due to the coronavirus pandemic, Deputy Foreign Minister Avet Adonts
said on Tuesday.
“As of April 21, 1,283 citizens applied to our diplomatic missions abroad to
return to Armenia,” Adonts told a news conference. “They are from different
countries: the United States, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, European countries,
Middle Eastern states and elsewhere.”
According to Adonts, about other 22,000 citizens have returned to Armenia since
March 14. Some of them were repatriated on charter flights arranged and, in some
cases, financed by the government.
About 1,000 Armenians were flown to Yerevan from Moscow and two other Russian
cities on five such flights carried out by Russian airlines earlier this month.
All of them were placed under a two-week quarantine on their arrival in the
country.
Adonts thanked Russian-Armenian benefactors who paid for the tickets of most of
those passengers, including women and young children, and offered free
accommodation to other Armenians seeking repatriation.
He also said: “We have been spending quite large resources on ensuring their
health safety after their return. I first and foremost mean the quarantine which
is mandatory for everyone coming back to Armenia.”
Some 120 Armenians have been stuck at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport for the last
several days, refusing temporary accommodation offers and hoping to catch the
next emergency flight to Yerevan. Russian police forced them out of an airport
terminal late on Monday.
Adonts urged the stranded citizens to abide by coronavirus-related restrictions
imposed by Russian authorities and avoid gathering at the airport for now. The
Armenian Foreign Ministry will try to evacuate them “in the coming days,” he
said.
Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian announced afterwards that 18 Armenian
nationals are expected to arrive from the United Arab Emirates later on Tuesday.
Health Minister Urges More Efforts To Fight Coronavirus
• Naira Bulghadarian
• Karine Simonian
Armenia -- Healthcare workers are seen outside the Nork hospital in Yerevan
which deals with most coronavirus cases in Armenia, March 20, 2020.
Health Minister Arsen Torosian called for “additional efforts” to slow the
spread of coronavirus in Armenia on Tuesday after authorities reported the
highest daily increase in infections in more than two weeks.
The Armenian Ministry of Health said in the morning that the number of
coronavirus cases rose by 62, to 1,401, while 29 other persons recovered from
COVID-19 in the past day. It also reported two more fatalities which raised the
country’s death toll from the virus to 24.
Torosian said that official statistics for the last several days indicate a
“steady” rate of new infections standing at 3-4 percent. “We also have
approximately the same number of hospitalized people which varies from 700 to
800,” he wrote on Facebook.
But the minister also said: “This means that we all must make additional efforts
to lower the peace of the spread [of the disease] and have no right to relax and
lose our vigilance.”
“Especially worrying are recent days’ cases [of infection] among healthcare
workers at medical centers in Yerevan and regions,” he added. “The use of
personal protective equipment is far more important for healthcare workers than
for other citizens.”
Armenia -- Health Minister Arsen Torosian at a news conference in Yerevan, March
26, 2020.
Hasmik Ghazinian, a senior doctor at Yerevan’s Nork hospital treating only
COVID-19 patients, complained that many Armenians are not following social
distancing rules or wearing masks or gloves when leaving their homes. She warned
of a surge in infections in the days ahead.
“Our doctors, medical personnel are acting heroically on the frontline [of the
fight against coronavirus,] … but the rear (other citizens) does not seem to be
safeguarding the achievements of the frontline workers,” Ghazinian told RFE/RL’s
Armenian service.
“I think the reason for this is that people are not taking [the epidemic]
seriously and believe that it’s based on false information,” said Giorgi
Kantaria, a doctor from the Surp Grigor Lusavorich hospital who is currently
treating about 100 infected people quarantined at a Yerevan hotel.
“I want to assure them that it’s real and their help is also necessary,” said
Kantaria. “Doctors’ help is not enough.”
Such appeals fell on deaf ears in the northern city of Vanadzor where more than
2,000 employees of a local textile factory defied a government to return to
their workplaces on Tuesday one month after being put on unpaid leave. Police
officers fined several of them but had to leave the Gloria company’s premises
after being confronted by hundreds of mostly female workers.
Armenia -- Gloria factory owner Bagrat Darbinian (L) argues with a police
officer, Vanadzor, .
The angry women said they want the factory to immediately resume its work
because they are no longer able to support themselves and their families. They
claimed that they have not received financial assistance allocated by the
Armenian government to tens of thousands of people hit hard by economic
disruptions resulting from the epidemic.
Gloria’s owner, Bagrat Darbinian, insisted, for his part, that he did not tell
his workers to report for work in the absence of a government permission.
The government ordered the closure of most nonessential business in the country
as part of a nationwide lockdown imposed on March 24. It allowed some of them,
notably construction firms, to resume their work on April 13. The permission is
supposedly conditional on their compliance with coronavirus-related safety rules
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced last week plans to also reopen other
sectors of the Armenian economy, including the textile industry, on April 20.
However, the government appears to have delayed that decision at least until
next week.
Armenian Church Rejects Fresh Criticism From Pashinian
Armenia - Catholicos Garegin II (C) celebrates a Christmas mass at the
Echmiadzin cathedral of the Armenian Apostolic Church, 6 January 2015.
The Armenian Apostolic Church rebutted on Tuesday a scathing attack on its top
clergymen launched by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Pashinian on Monday listed the church among those groups -- including the former
ruling regime, “oligarchs,” many media outlets and “some Diaspora structures” --
who he said are upset with his government. He claimed that the government’s
policies are causing “very serious disappointment” among the clergy because they
are exposing a “lack of spiritual life in Armenia.”
Pashinian also accused the church of frequently meddling in politics and
hatching “political intrigues” instead of engaging in “activity stemming from
the Bible and its ideology.”
The Echmiadzin-based office of the church’s supreme head, Catholicos Garegin II,
responded by saying that it disagrees with Pashinian’s “evaluations.” But it
said that it will not comment on them further now that the country is about to
mark the 105th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.
A statement released by the Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin also cited Garegin as
calling on all Armenians to “steer clear of discord and speculations” and
instead ask the genocide victims for “intercession” for the sake of “overcoming
existing challenges in national life.”
Armenia - Catholicos Garegin II meets with the Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in
the Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin, November 14, 2018
Tension between the ancient church and Pashinian’s political team rose
dramatically last week after Garegin called for the release on health grounds of
the jailed former President Robert Kocharian. The latter is standing trial on
coup and corruption charges rejected by him as politically motivated.
Garegin said on April 14 that Kocharian and other criminal suspects “not posing
a threat to the society” should be set free for now because they risk being
infected with coronavirus in prison.
The remarks prompted angry reactions from Pashinian’s political allies and
supporters. Some of them, notably deputy parliament speaker Alen Simonian,
demanded Garegin’s resignation. Simonian also accused the Catholicos of putting
pressure on courts.
On April 15, the National Security Service (NSS) said that it has brought fraud
and money laundering charges against Archbishop Navasard Kchoyan, the
controversial head of the church’s largest diocese encompassing Yerevan and
southern Ararat province. Kchoyan denied the charges.
The Mother See urged government officials and media to respect Kchoyan’s
presumption of innocence. It also described as “bewildering” the fact that the
NSS announced the indictment one day after Garegin urged Kocharian’s release.
Several senior clergymen pushed back against the harsh criticism in the
following days, accusing government loyalists of being disrespectful towards a
religious institution to which the vast majority of Armenians nominally belong.
They were backed by conservative groups, some mainstream opposition figures and
other critics of the current government.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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