Friday,
Putin ‘Ready’ To Visit Armenia Despite Tensions
• Aza Babayan
KYRGYZSTAN - Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a signing ceremony
following Russian-Kyrgyz talks in Bishkek, .
President Vladimir Putin appeared to downplay Russia’s rift with Armenia on
Friday, saying he will visit the South Caucasus country again despite its
acceptance of jurisdiction of an international court that issued an arrest
warrant for him in March.
Despite stern warnings from the Russian leadership, the Armenian parliament
ratified on October 3 the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court
(ICC) known as the Rome Statute. The move initiated by Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian and condemned by Moscow added to unprecedented tensions between the
two allied states.
Russian officials said it will cause serious damage to Russian-Armenian
relations. They dismissed Yerevan’s assurances that the ratification does not
commit it to arresting Putin and handing him over to the ICC in the event of his
visit to Armenia.
Putin said that he and Pashinian have exchanged fresh invitations to visit their
respective capitals. He said he has no plans to travel to Yerevan yet because
Pashinian is now busy coping with “the tragedy of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians.”
“He probably has no time for traveling right now,” Putin told reporters after a
Commonwealth of Independent States summit in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek. “When
the situation [in Armenia] normalizes I will visit them and [Pashinian] will
come [to Moscow.]”
Armenia - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Russian President Vladimir
Putin attend a CSTO summit in Yerevan, November 23, 2022.
Putin stressed that he and Pashinian “remain in touch” and that their
governments keep working together on their bilateral agenda. He went on to play
down Pashinian’s decision not to attend the CIS summit, attributing it to “quite
understandable circumstances.”
“I’m not going to talk about them. You had better ask the Armenian prime
minister. As far as I understand, Armenia is not leaving the CIS,” added the
Russian leader.
Pashinian made clear earlier this week that he does not plan to demand the
withdrawal of Russian troops from Armenia or get his country out of the
Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) repeatedly criticized
by him. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov seemed encouraged by these
assurances.
“We hope that this position will prevail despite [Western] attempts to drag
Yerevan in another direction,” Lavrov told journalists in Bishkek on Thursday.
For his part, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed confidence on Friday
that Armenia will remain Russia’s ally.
Karabakh Armenian Goes On Trial In Azerbaijan
• Susan Badalian
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Azerbaijan - Vagif Khachatrian stands trial in Baku, .
An ethnic Armenian from Nagorno-Karabakh went on trial in Baku on Friday two and
a half months after being arrested by Azerbaijani security forces during his
aborted medical evacuation to Armenia.
The 68-year-old Vagif Khachatrian was among Karabakh patients escorted by the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to Armenian hospitals for urgent
treatment. He was detained at an Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Lachin corridor
and then charged with killing and deporting Karabakh’s ethnic Azerbaijani
residents at the start of the first Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
Azerbaijani authorities have implicated Khachatrian in the alleged killings of
25 Azerbaijanis from the Karabakh village of Meshali captured by Karabakh
Armenian forces in December 1991. He lived in another village close to Meshali
during and after the 1991-199 war.
The man’s family strongly denies the accusations, saying that he was a tractor
driver and was never in a position to commit any war crimes.
Khachatrian, who was due to undergo a heart surgery in Yerevan, looked
distraught and unwell as he appeared before a military court in Baku. Videos
circulated by Azerbaijani media showed him repeatedly putting his right hand on
his heart during the opening session of his trial.
One of his three daughters currently living in Armenia cried when she commented
on those images. “I find no words to describe my feelings,” she told RFE/RL’s
Armenian.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry condemned the “sham trial.” Its spokeswoman, Ani
Badalian, insisted that Khachatrian was arrested and prosecuted “in flagrant
violation of international humanitarian law.”
“Armenian POWs and civilians still held hostage in Baku should be released,”
Badalian wrote on the X social media platform.
They include eight former political and military leaders of Karabakh who were
arrested at the Azerbaijani checkpoint late last month during the mass exodus of
the region’s ethnic Armenian population resulting from Azerbaijan’s September
19-20 military offensive. They are facing various grave accusations rejected by
the Armenian government as well as current Karabakh officials.
Sources told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday that the detainees, among them
three former Karabakh presidents and Armenian-born billionaire Ruben Vardanyan,
were allowed to phone their families in Armenia in recent days.
Another detainee, Davit Manukian, was a deputy commander of the Karabakh army
until 2021. Manukian’s brother Gegham, who is an Armenian opposition
parliamentarian, said he had to speak to speak to his family members in Russian
during their brief conversation on Wednesday.
The ICRC confirmed, meanwhile, that so far Baku has not allowed its
representatives to visit any of the jailed Karabakh leaders in custody.
Belarus Leader Chides Armenia
Kyrgyzstan - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko attends the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS) leaders' summit in Bishkek, .
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko publicly criticized Armenia on Friday
one week after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian met with an exiled opponent of his
regime in Europe.
Lukashenko urged ex-Soviet republics making up the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) to close ranks in the face of what he described as the West’s
attempts to “tear us to pieces.”
“First, Georgia left our grouping; de facto, Ukraine is not with us; and there
are big questions about Moldova. Unfortunately, Armenia does not always behave
like a partner,” he said during CIS summit in Bishkek shunned by Pashinian.
It was not clear whether he referred to the boycott or the Pashinian
government’s broader tensions with Russia that have cast doubt on Armenia’s
continued membership in Russian-led blocs.
As recently as on October 5, Pashinian and his Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan
made a point of talking to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana
Tsikhanouskaya during a European Union summit in the Spanish city of Granada.
Tsikhanouskaya tweeted the following day that she “expressed condolences in
connection with the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh” and called for a lasting
peace in the region.
Pashinian’s press office issued no statements on the brief meeting. Nor did the
Belarusian government officially react to it.
Spain - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Foreign Minister Ararat
Mirzoyan meet Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Granada,
October 5, 203.
Tsikhanouskaya was the main opposition candidate allowed to take part in a 2020
presidential election which handed Lukashenka a sixth term as president. The
Belarusian opposition and the West have refused to recognize the results of the
vote followed by anti-government protests and a brutal crackdown on its
participants. Tsikhanouskaya left Belarus and currently lives in Lithuania.
As recently as in June, Lukashenko urged the Russian-led Collective Security
Treaty Organization (CSTO) to address serious security concerns of Armenia and
other CSTO member states. That contrasted with his earlier statements on
Armenia’s conflict with Azerbaijan.
In particular, the long-serving strongman bluntly opposed in October 2022 any
CSTO intervention in the conflict, which was demanded by Yerevan. Azerbaijan is
not an adversary of Belarus and its President Ilham Aliyev is “totally our guy,”
he said, sparking a fresh war of words between Yerevan and Minsk.
Lukashenko, who has a warm personal rapport with Aliyev, had repeatedly raised
eyebrows in Armenia in the past with his pro-Azerbaijani statements and arms
supplies to Baku. He appeared to welcome on Friday the Azerbaijani takeover of
Nagorno-Karabakh, saying that some of the “protracted conflicts” in the former
Soviet Union have been “successfully overcome.”
Putin Offers To Host More Armenian-Azeri Talks
Kyrgyzstan - Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijan's President Ilham
Aliyev pose for a picture during a meeting in Bishkek, .
Russia is ready to host fresh peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan,
President Vladimir Putin said on Friday during a summit of leaders of ex-Soviet
states boycotted by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
“On the agenda is the preparation of a peace agreement to end this protracted
conflict,” he said. “And the Russian side is, of course, ready to provide our
partners with all possible assistance in this. In particular, we stand ready to
organize negotiations in Moscow, if necessary, in any format. For starters,
[talks between] foreign ministers, experts.”
Putin met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met late on Thursday ahead of
the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit in Kyrgyzstan’s capital
Bishkek. According to one of his aides, the Russian leader would have also met
Pashinian had the latter attended the summit.
Pashinian gave no reason for his decision not to fly to Bishkek. His foreign
minister, Ararat Mirzoyan, likewise declined to attend a meeting of CIS foreign
ministers held there earlier on Thursday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
hoped to hold trilateral talks with his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts on
the sidelines of that gathering.
The effective boycotts came amid unprecedented tensions between Russia and
Armenia aggravated by last month’s Azerbaijani military offensive in and
resulting takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian officials have denounced
Russian peacekeepers for not preventing or thwarting the offensive. Putin again
defended the peacekeepers in his speech at the CIS summit.
Yerevan now seems to prefer Western mediation of Armenian-Azerbaijani peace
talks. Pashinian and Aliyev were scheduled to meet on the fringes of the
European Union’s October 5 summit in Granada, Spain. Armenian officials expected
them to sign a framework peace deal there. However, the Azerbaijani leader
withdrew from the talks at the last minute.
European Council President Charles Michel afterwards expressed hope that the two
leaders will meet in Brussels later this month. But it is still not clear
whether it will take place.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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