12:12,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Minister of Defense Vagharshak Harutyunyan is visiting the Province of Syunik to get acquainted with the ongoing reinforcement works on the ground in the regions bordering Azerbaijan.
The Ministry of Defense said he will also get acquainted with the ongoing construction of combat positions, and the process of the military’s on-duty combat shifts.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
14:10,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual news conference is likely to last for about 3 to 4 hours, his press secretary, Dmitry Peskov said before the event on Thursday, reports TASS.
“We expect it to be between 3 and 4 hours”, Peskov said noting that the format of a video conference is more complex than live talk, so it is hard to predict how long the news conference could take.
15:29,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 11, ARMENPRESS. Protesters calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan are again rallying in different parts of Yerevan.
One group had gathered at the Sayat Nova-Charents intersection, where ARF official Gegham Manukyan was leading the crowd. They began disrupting traffic and police intervened. Manukyan was detained. Protesters resumed marching down Sayat Nova Street. Similar demonstrations, described as “civil disobedience” campaigns are underway elsewhere in Yerevan.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
The issue of exchange of captives and bodies of killed as well as the search of missing servicemen is very sensitive war and demands quick solutions, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ara Aivazian stated today at the meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.
“It is particularly important regarding prisoners of war and not only, on the background of the numerous confirmed facts of in the direct sense of word barbaric attitude toward them. Among the mentioned issues is also the one on preservation of Armenian religious and cultural sites. We are hopeful that Russia, both in national and as OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing country will promote the solution of the issues and the peaceful settlement of the conflict which will be implemented by the future activity of the institute of co-chairmanship,” the minister said.
He stressed that in parallel with the allied cooperation he is ready to view the key aspects of bilateral relations in political, defense, trade, economic and humanitarian sectors as well as discuss multisided agenda of the EAEU, CSTO and CIS and the issue of coordination of positions of foreign policy in UN, OSCE and other international organizations.
“I am convinced that the mutual focus on efficiency of the visit will promote the further development of allied cooperation, the reinforcement of security and stability in the South Caucasian region,” Aivazian stressed.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said today that Azerbaijani forces have inhumanely treated numerous ethnic Armenian military troops captured in the Karabakh conflict. In most of the videos, the captors’ faces are visible, suggesting that they did not fear being held accountable, HRW notes.
“There can be no justification for the violent and humiliating treatment of prisoners of war,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Humanitarian law is absolutely clear on the obligation to protect POWs. Azerbaijan’s authorities should ensure that this treatment ends immediately.”
Human Rights Watch says it has closely examined 14 of the dozens of videos posted on social media showing abuse of Armenian POWs. It has also spoken to families of those held captive.
“The videos depict Azerbaijani captors variously slapping, kicking, and prodding Armenian POWs, and compelling them, under obvious duress and with the apparent intent to humiliate, to kiss the Azerbaijani flag, praise Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, swear at Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and declare that Nagorno-Karabakh is Azerbaijan,” HRW says.
HRW also notes that although some of the prisoners depicted in videos reviewed have, in subsequent communications with their families, said they are being treated well, there are serious grounds for concern about their safety and well-being.
On November 29, the European Court of Human Rights said it is satisfied with Armenia’s application regarding the case for the protection of the rights of captive military personnel and detained civilians currently in Azerbaijan. Armenia’s former Minister of Justice and human rights activist Artak Zeynalyan who represents the captives, said that ECHR will take urgent action and request data from the government of Azerbaijan about the captives’ locations and conditions.
The Karabakh Human Rights Defender’s Office reports that it has identified about 60 prisoners of war from various videos, only a small part of whom have not yet been identified.
In Armenia, parents and relatives of missing servicemen have been gathering in front of Armenia’s Ministry of Defense to demand information from authorities. While there is no information regarding the exact number of prisoners, estimates suggest that the number exceeds 100.
In Berdashen, eastern Nagorno-Karabakh, the ceasefire line between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces has come to a standstill 50 metres from a pomegranate field. The new border was fixed by the end of hostilities agreement signed on 9 November. With no apparent problems on this long empty plain, agricultural work continues.
17:30,
YEREVAN, 17 NOVEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs “Armenpress” that today, 17 November, USD exchange rate up by 0.24 drams to 497.38 drams. EUR exchange rate up by 1.38 drams to 590.24 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.02 drams to 6.49 drams. GBP exchange rate up by 2.75 drams to 657.83 drams.
The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.
Gold price down by 70.16 drams to 30152.89 drams. Silver price up by 0.50 drams to 388.02 drams. Platinum price up by 198.81 drams to 14535.94 drams.
Armenia had the chance to stop the war in mid-October and maintain control of the key city of Shusha, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
The remarkable claim is likely to put even more pressure on Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who is facing the political fight of his life over his handling of the war and his country’s defeat.
In a November 17 interview with Rossiya 24, Putin recalled that he had a series of conversations on October 19 and 20 with Pashinyan and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev.
“On the whole, I managed to convince President Aliyev that it was possible to end hostilities, but the return of refugees, including to Shusha, was a mandatory condition on his part,” Putin said.
Shusha (which Armenians spell Shushi) was Azerbaijan’s key goal in the war; it regards the city as its cultural and historical center in the region.
“Unexpectedly for me, the position of our Armenian partners was that they perceived this as something unacceptable,” Putin continued. “Prime Minister Pashinyan told me openly that he viewed this as a threat to the interests of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. I do not quite understand the essence of this hypothetical threat, I mean, it was about the return of civilians to their homes, while the Armenian side was to have retained control over this section of Nagorno-Karabakh, including Shusha, and meaning that our peacekeepers were there, which we have agreed upon both with Armenia and Azerbaijan. At that point, the prime minister told me that his country could not agree to this, and that it would struggle and fight.”
Putin’s claim contradicted Pashinyan’s many recent public statements in which he insisted that he had never been presented with an option to end the war that didn’t involve the surrender of Shusha.
Pashinyan and his allies have not directly responded to Putin’s statement. But military journalist and analyst Tatul Hakobyan said that the prime minister needed to explain in better detail his reasoning.
“Why did Pashinyan not agree with Putin’s proposal when he had clear information about the capabilities of the Armenian army?” Hakobyan asked in a column on the news website CivilNet. Hakobyan suggested that Pashinyan may have been hoping for a military turnaround, or that he preferred to lose the war fighting rather than submit to the return of Azerbaijani refugees to Shusha. “There may be other options, and in order to give a complete answer to the question, Nikol Pashinyan’s explanation is needed, how, why and under what circumstances Shushi fell,” he wrote.
In the aftermath of the war, many Armenians have turned against Pashinyan, and a common claim is that he “sold out” to Azerbaijan, including by ceding Shusha when the country still had a chance to win. A series of military officials have backed Pashinyan on that claim, arguing that Armenia’s military position was much more dire than many people believed. (That belief, incidentally, was fed by government officials’ overly rosy assessments of how the war was proceeding while Armenia was rapidly losing ground.)
In a way, Putin’s statement was a defense of Pashinyan. Following his account of the October 19 and 20 discussions, he concluded: “Therefore, these accusations of treason against him are absolutely groundless. On the other hand, it remains unclear whether this was right or wrong. This is a different matter, but there was certainly no treason here.”
Some of Pashinyan’s allies seized on that latter statement.
Deputy speaker of parliament Alen Simonyan tweeted Putin’s statement, commenting, “Accusations of treason against Pashinyan have no basis.” But others mocked his selective quoting: “You are publishing only one sentence as if we can’t read, listen and understand Russian,” one responded.
But Putin’s defense of Pashinyan, such as it was, was a backhanded one, and is likely to feed into increasing criticisms of the prime minister’s decision-making during the war.
Chief of Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces Onik Gasparyan issued a statement on November 17 claiming that military officials told Pashinyan “on the fourth day of the war” that the Armenian forces were hopelessly outmatched against Azerbaijan and Turkey and that “measures must be taken to end the war in two or three days.”
On November 16 Mikayel Minasyan, the son in-law of former president Serzh Sargsyan and a frequent critic of Pashinyan, published a document on Facebook that he claimed was an earlier iteration of a ceasefire deal that could have given Armenia better conditions, including retaining Shusha, no access road to Nakhchivan, and a broader security zone around the Lachin corridor connecting Karabakh to Armenia – 10 kilometers rather than five. “This was one of the options before the document you signed. After that, you received one more offer, after which you created a hopeless situation by signing the capitulation document,” Minasyan wrote.
Pashinyan has rejected such claims, arguing repeatedly that he was never presented with an option to end the war that didn’t involve losing Shusha. “I want to explain so people understand. Before Shushi had fallen, in all possible scenarios we were going to have to surrender Shushi,” he said in a November 13 interview with public television.
Pashinyan repeated the claim on November 16 in a press conference. Later that day, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Anna Naghdalyan, responded to a question about Pashinyan’s statement: “Let me make it clear that there has been no question about renouncing the city of Shushi in any stage of the peace process.”
Pashinyan soon after said that he intended to fire Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and almost simultaneously Naghdalyan posted Mnatsakanyan’s resignation letter on Facebook.