11:10,
YEREVAN, APRIL 22, ARMENPRESS. 9 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed over the last 24 hours, bringing the cumulative total number of confirmed cases to 422,814, the Armenian Healthcare Ministry said.
No new deaths were recorded and the death toll remained 8,622.
18 people recovered (total recoveries: 410,535).
3,123 tests were administered (total tests: 3,029,751).
As of April 22 the number of active cases stood at 1,974.
Artsakh’s State Minister Artak Beglaryan on Friday refuted Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s claims on the population of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region. The minister’s full statement is provided below.
“Ilham Aliyev made new falsifications of historical facts, for this time – on the demography of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region.
At an event in occupied Shushi, the president of Azerbaijan, in addition to other false statements, said that during the soviet era the Azerbaijani population was majority in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, while the reality is the contrary.
1. In 1921, at the moment of Karabakh annexation, the Azerbaijani population was 4%, and in the following decades the USSR censuses show the following:
• 1926 – 10.06%,
• 1939 – 9.32%,
• 1959 – 13.80%,
• 1970 – 18.08%,
• 1979 – 22.98%,
• 1989 – 21.52%.
2. Definitely, the rest of the population was Armenian and a tiny percentage – minorities.
3. And those are numbers which had been collected by the Soviet Azerbaijani authorities, including the father of Ilham Aliyev. Therefore, they are inflated.
4. The stable growth of the Azerbaijani population in Nagorno-Karabakh during the soviet era is explained by the white genocide committed against the Armenian indigenous people.
5. The Azerbaijani authorities must keep in mind forever that Artsakh has had an exclusively Armenian overwhelming majority for 3,000 years.”
21:43,
YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin summed up the results of the meeting held within the framework of the Prime Minister’s official visit.
As ARMENPRESS was informed from the Offic eof the Prime Minsiter, the statement runs as follows:
At the invitation of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin, on April 19-20, 2022, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia N.V. Pashinyan paid an official visit to the Russian Federation.
The Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia and the President of the Russian Federation expressed confidence that the effective negotiations held in Moscow will contribute to the further strengthening of the Armenian-Russian multilateral special allied relations.
N.V. Pashinyan thanked for the warm reception given by V.V. Putin, confirmed his invitation to the Russian leader to visit Yerevan in the second half of 2022 in connection with the session of the CSTO Collective Security Council. The invitation was accepted with gratitude.
The Armenia-Azerbaijan border
After Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan blamed the international community for “forcing” Yerevan to lower the bar on its expectations for a final status of Karabakh and thus angering the authorities and people of Artsakh, his ruling party made an attempt to walk back some of the brazen concessions by saying that Artsakh had “misunderstood” Yerevan’s signals.
In an unprecedented rebuke of Pashinyan’s remarks, the authorities in Stepanakert emphasized that Artsakh cannot fall under Azerbaijani control and its hard-won independence and the people’s right to self-determination should not be threatened. The Artsakh parliament on Thursday issued a statement calling on Pashinyan to retract his statement, which they said posed an existential threat to Artsakh.
“Our colleagues probably did not understand well the essence of the prime minister’s speech. I just can’t find any other explanation for that declaration,” said Eduard Aghajanyan, a senior member of Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party who heads the Armenian parliament’s committee on foreign relations.
“Any solution that would lead to the exodus of Armenians from Artsakh cannot be acceptable for the Republic of Armenia,” Aghajanyan claimed, adding that the people of Artsakh would be the crucial beneficiaries of Pashinyan’s proposed approach to engage in “peace talks” with Azerbaijan.
“The Artsakh conflict was never a territorial dispute for Armenia,” said Aghajanyan. “It has been an issue of exercising the right of the Armenians of Artsakh to live safely in their homeland. Therefore, for us, basically the status has always been a measure to exercise these rights. Armenia’s position on this issue has always been unchanged.”
Pashinyan’s ally also discussed the issue of “lowering the bar” on expectations on Artsakh’s status.
“First of all, this is about the bar as a result of which the international community ensure consolidation around Armenia resulting in, at least, a pro-Armenian solution becoming more likely,” said Aghajanyan.
“We have 30 years of negotiating experience during which we’ve had a certain bar, and also because of this during these 30 years Armenia was essentially in a diplomatic isolation, the consequences of which I believe we are all seeing, and we also saw during and after the 44-day war. I think it is time to draw conclusions from our mistakes and move forward realistic reasons,” claimed the Civil Contract lawmaker.
Aghajanyan claimed that Pashinyan did not make any comments about Artsakh being part of Azerbaijan, saying that Yerevan would not agree to any solution that is not acceptable to the people of Artsakh.
Pashinyan attends inauguration of new police force in Gyumri
16:31,
YEREVAN, APRIL 16, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan visited the city of Gyumri for the inauguration of the new patrol police service of the Shirak Province.
Police Chief of Armenia Vahe Ghazaryan, Deputy Prime Minister Hambardzum Matevosyan, Defense Minister Suren Papikyan, National Security Service Director Armen Abazyan, Justice Minister Karen Andreasyan, Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures Gnel Sanosyan, Ombudsperson Kristinne Grigoryan, MP, Head of the Parliamentary Committee on Defense and Security Affairs Andranik Kocharyan, State Revenue Committee Chairman Rustam Badasyan, EU Ambassador Andrea Wiktorin, US Ambassador Lynne Tracy were among the attendees.
The prime minister delivered remarks, awarded distinguished officers and viewed the new police cruisers.
The Azerbaijani troops that intruded in to the neutral zone of the line of contact near the settlement of Seysulan in the Martakert region have returned to the positions occupied before the incident, Artsakh’s InfoCenter reports.
In On April 15 the enemy had advanced a certain amount of manpower, trying to improve its position in the neutral zone.
In the evening of the same day, as a result of negotiations conducted by the Russian peacekeeping contingent deployed in Artsakh, the Azerbaijani troops agreed to return to their starting positions.
At this moment the Azerbaijani side has fully returned to its positions occupied before the above-mentioned incident. The operative-tactical situation in other parts of the line of contact is calm.
Nikol Pashinyan faced a protest during his visit to Armenia’s second largest city of Gyumri on Saturday.
The protesters were holding a red and white barrier tape reading “I don’t agree!” along a street in the city.
“I don’t agree with the situation in the country, with the fact that we can’t show ourselves as a decent citizen, I don’t agree with this prolonged silence,” said one protester.
“I don’t agree with the current authorities,” another added.
GLENDALE—Glendale City Council Member Ardashes “Ardy” Kassakhian was selected as the City’s Mayor by fellow councilmembers on Tuesday. Kassakhian takes over the position from outgoing Mayor Paula Devine. This is Kassakhian’s first time serving in the role of Mayor.
Born in Boston, Mayor Ardy Kassakhian has been a resident of Glendale since 1986. Prior to his election to City Council, Mr. Kassakhian served as the elected City Clerk for Glendale for 15 years, having been elected and re-elected four times by Glendale’s voters.
Mayor Kasskahian is the product of Glendale schools, having attended John Marshall and R.D. White Elementary schools, Wilson Middle School, and Glendale High School (’94). Mayor Kassakhian graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Arts in History. He received his Master of Arts in Public Policy and Administration from Northwestern University. More recently, he attended the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and completed the Certificate Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government. He is also an alumnus of the Coro Public Affairs Fellowship.
The California Senate Rules Committee appointed Mayor Kassakhian to serve on the California New Motor Vehicle Board and to the Language Accessibility Advisory Committee by Secretary of State Alex Padilla.
Mayor Kassakhian currently serves as the Chair of the Glendale Housing Authority and was appointed to serve as Glendale’s representative on the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California Board of Directors and the California Contract Cities Association.
“I have dedicated the majority of my career to serving the residents of the City of Glendale,” said Mayor Kassakhian. “From my beginnings as the City’s Clerk, through my time as a Councilmember, and now as Mayor, I will continue to serve this great community and ensure its future. I am honored for this opportunity and thank my colleagues for enlisting their trust in me in this coming year.”
Councilmember Kassakhian and his wife, Courtney, live in the Pelanconi neighborhood of Glendale with their son.
ArmInfo. Should a referendum on joining Russia take place in Artsakh, Russia has every chance to win, the independent analyst Armen Hovhannisyan said in an interview with ArmInfo.
“We can speak in favor of such a prospect given Russia’s extensive experience in holding referendums in its actually mandated territories in the post-Soviet space. I consider such an outcome most likely in the case of Artsakh, which found itself under Russia’s control as a result of the 44-day war,” he said.
The recent period has seen regular reports on the public sentiments in Artsakh in favor of a referendum on joining Russia. The sources of the reports are mostly located in Artsakh, but the Russian federal mass media are disseminated the information as well.
According to Mr Hovhannisyan, the threats to hold a referendum in Artsakh or to recognize its independence are, by and large, Moscow’s response to Baku’s recent threats to open a second front for Russia in the Caucasus mid the Ukraine developments.
The fact is, however, that it is the territories under the West’s control that have in recent decades gained real independence after the people actually exercised their right to self-determination – Kosovo, for example. On the other hand, similar Russian projects – Transdniestria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, as well as the Donetsk and Luhansk republics now, – are the entities recognized by Russia alone.
“Negotiations over Artsakh’s independence are under way in Russia as well. But we should clearly see the understand the difference between the independence as viewed by Russia and the independence of Artsakh that is mentioned in, for example, the resolution approved by the French Senate in the wake of the 44-day Azerbaijani aggression. These are entirely different types of independence – in terms of both essence and dependence on the recognizing states,” Mr Hovhannisyan said.
11:12, 9 April, 2022
YEREVAN, APRIL 9, ARMENPRESS. Saudi Arabia will let up to 1 million people join the Haj pilgrimage this year, greatly expanding the key event to participants from outside the kingdom after two years of tight COVID restrictions, Reuters reports citing the state media.
Pilgrims to Mecca this year must be under age 65 and fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, the ministry of Hajj and Umrah said in a statement carried by the SPA news agency.
Participants from abroad will be allowed this year but must present a recent negative COVID PCR test, and health precautions will be observed, it said.