Author: Karagyozian Lena

Armenian soldier (Armenian MoD, July 27, 2022)

Two Armenian soldiers were killed on Wednesday in renewed fighting in Artsakh, following a week of escalated military hostilities.

On the morning of August 3, Azeri forces fired grenade launchers, drones and mortars in the direction of the northwestern section of the Artsakh border and deployed firearms, according to the Artsakh Defense Army. Gurgen Galeri Gabrielyan and Artur Yuri Khachatryan were killed in the attack. More than a dozen Armenian soldiers were wounded. 

“Measures are being taken with the Russian peacekeeping mission in Artsakh to stabilize the situation,” the Artsakh Defense Army wrote.  

Artsakh President Arayik Harutyunyan has declared a partial military mobilization. 

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry reported that one Azerbaijani soldier, Kazimov Anar Rustam, was killed when Armenian forces subjected Azerbaijani positions in the Lachin district to “intensive fire.” 

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry placed “all responsibility for the incident that took place on the territory of Azerbaijan” on Armenia, which it says “has not yet withdrawn illegal armed detachments from the territories of the neighboring state.” The Azerbaijani government has repeatedly insisted that all Armenian forces must leave Artsakh, according to the ceasefire agreement ending the 2020 Artsakh War. Armenian authorities say that the ceasefire stipulates the withdrawal of Armenian forces from regions captured by Azerbaijan during the war.

During a meeting with the personal representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Andrzej Kaspryzk on August 3, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan “condemned the arbitrary interpretation of trilateral statements and attempts to destabilize the situation by Azerbaijan.” 

Wednesday’s attack followed three days of sustained tensions along the Artsakh border. On the morning of August 1, subdivisions of the Azerbaijani armed forces attempted to cross the line of contact in the southern and southwestern parts of Artsakh, according to the Artsakh Defense Army. One Armenian soldier, Albert Vladiki Bakhshiyan, was wounded. 

The Russian peacekeeping contingent in Artsakh verified the report, stating that the Azerbaijani armed forces had committed three violations of the ceasefire. 

“The command of the Russian peacekeepers, in cooperation with representatives of the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides, has resolved the situation,” the Russian peacekeeping force wrote of the August 1 advance. 

The latest attacks follow several accusations of ceasefire violations in Artsakh and Armenia over the previous week. From July 27-28, Azeri forces fired on positions of the Artsakh Defense Army near the Tonashen, Karmir Shuka and Taghavard villages in the Martuni region for 20 minutes, according to the Artsakh Defense Army. The window of a residential home in Karmir Shuka was broken, and eight bullets were found lying nearby in the yard, according to images shared by Artsakh Human Rights Defender Gegham Stepanyan. 

Window broken by gunfire (Gegham Stepanyan, July 28, 2022)

The Armenian Defense Ministry also accused the Azerbaijani military of firing on Armenian positions on the eastern section of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border on July 28. 

Amid Azerbaijani incursions into Artsakh this week, Azerbaijani authorities have demanded that Armenians halt use of the Lachin corridor.

“The Azerbaijani side made a claim through the peacekeeping contingent deployed in Artsakh to organize traffic via the new route in the near future,” a readout of an Artsakh Security Council meeting on August 2 by the office of Artsakh’s President Arayik Harutyunyan states. 

The statement adds that the Security Council discussed “ensuring safe traffic with the assistance of the Russian peacekeeping troops.”

The Berdzor/Lachin corridor is currently the only route connecting Armenia and Artsakh and passes through the Berdzor district, which was ceded to Azerbaijan after the 2020 Artsakh War. Under the terms of the November 9, 2020 ceasefire agreement, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to construct an alternate route to the Berdzor/Lachin corridor within the following three years, to which Russian soldiers would be deployed. 

Construction of the portion of the road passing through Azerbaijani-controlled territory is nearly complete. Meanwhile, the Armenian Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure announced just this week that construction of the Armenian section of the road will start this month.

Secretary of Armenia’s Security Council Armen Grigoryan said that Azerbaijan’s demand to organize traffic connecting Armenia and Artsakh via the new route is “not legitimate.” 

“The trilateral statement mentions the plan for the construction of a new route. No such agreed upon plan exists. The Republic of Armenia has already proposed to agree over and sign the plan in a trilateral format and move forward with an agreed schedule and roadmap,” Grigoryan told state-run news agency Armenpress. 

Several critical pieces of infrastructure are located on the Berdzor corridor, including the natural gas pipeline that supplies Artsakh with its entire energy supply. Artsakh residents were deprived of heating and hot water for three weeks amid freezing temperatures in March after the Azerbaijani military prevented Armenian sapper groups from accessing a damaged section of the pipeline. 

Pashinyan confirmed in late June that several communities currently inhabited by Armenians in the Berdzor district, including the town of Berdzor and the villages of Aghavno, Nerkin Sus and Sus, will pass to Azerbaijani control after the construction of the new route. 

Political analyst Benyamin Poghosyan attributed this latest escalation by Azerbaijan to “some frustration in the Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiations.” 

“Probably Armenia did not accept or did reject some demand of Azerbaijan. Definitely now the Azerbaijani government is frustrated,” Poghosyan told CivilNet.

The Azerbaijani government escalates military hostilities to “create nervousness” in Armenia and Artsakh and “convince or force the Armenian government to accept all its demands during the negotiations.” 

The renewed military hostilities has prompted conversations between high-ranking leaders. 

On August 2, Pashinyan had a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The readout of the meeting from the PM’s office was brief, stating that the leaders discussed the implementation of the various trilateral agreements reached between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia after the 2020 Artsakh War. 

That same day, Mirzoyan spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov to discuss the “security situation in the region.” Azerbaijani Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov also spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu on August 2 to discuss “regional security.” 

The previous day, Mirzoyan held a phone conversation with the US Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried to discuss the “current security environment in the region” and “normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”

This interview was originally published in Armenian by Mediamax on June 14, 2022. It has been translated for publication in the Weekly by Dr. Ara Nazarian.

Anahit Adamyan is the wife of Avetik Chalabyan, a co-founder of the Arar Foundation and a member of the “Consolidation” movement who was arrested on May 14.

Avetik Chalabyan and Anahid Adamyan in Tsaghkadzor, April 10, 2022 (Photo: Official Facebook page of Avetik Chalabyan)

Tell us about yourself. How did you meet Avetik?

I was born in Abovyan in a family of engineers. My mother is Russian, and we mainly spoke Russian at home, but my father categorically decided that we would go to an Armenian school. And at that time people sent their children to Russian schools, and in many cases, parents started learning Russian together with their children. But it was the opposite in our house. My mother studied Armenian with us.

I did very well in school, but historical subjects were not my favorites. I liked math. I graduated from Yerevan State University’s (YSU) Faculty of Economics, after which I studied at the American University of Armenia (AUA). Avetik and I met there, where he had also applied to the AUA following his work at the YSU Faculty of Physics.

It was impossible not to notice Avetik. He always had a habit of asking difficult questions, sometimes even in a positive sense, “upsetting” the lecturers. I noticed Avetik in the classroom for the first time, when the lecturer was trying to say something, and he was constantly asking questions, interrupting the lesson. I thought, who is this guy who is preventing the lecture from going on as planned. It turned out that we found ourselves in a common circle of friends; we even found out that we were born on the same day, a few years apart. Thus began our closer relationship. We have been married for 21 years and have four children.

What was Avetik’s family life like?

Avetik was born in Yerevan in a family of physicists and grew up in a very typical Yerevan environment in the yard of a multilevel building in front of the “Russia Cinema.” From a young age, he had various interests, even contradictory and seemingly incompatible. For example, he took both painting and boxing classes. But his greatest interests were Armenian, world history, military history and military strategies.

One of Avetik’s characteristics is being constructive and rational, which was also manifested when choosing a profession. His father says that things came easily to him where challenging problems were easy exercises for him. Realizing that he did not want to study theoretical physics, he changed his major and first studied at the AUA, then in 2001 he received his MBA from the University of North Carolina.

He is an exceptional person for me with personality traits that I have always admired. He is a knowledgeable, reserved and balanced leader whose opinion is valued by everyone. For many years, he worked in the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Armenia. He has always excelled in effective negotiations, fair and impartial decision-making, reasoned debate and other important skills.

You lived in the USA for a while, then in Russia, but returned to Armenia. How did you make that decision?

We were studying in the United States and had no doubt that we would return. After living in the US for many years, Avetik received an offer from the Moscow branch of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, triggering our move to Russia. We lived in Moscow for about 20 years, but never thought we would settle there permanently. We always knew that one day we would return. We spent the summer months here, and all four of our children grew up under the care of their grandparents.

While living and working in Moscow, Avetik always implemented pro-Armenian programs in Moscow, Armenia and in Artsakh. He took an active part in public life and implemented initiatives supporting young people, students and various other groups.

Through the efforts and initiative of Avetik and his supporters, the Aybik Educational and Cultural Center was established in Moscow, serving as a platform for new educational opportunities for Armenian children and closer ties with the Armenian community.

Then Repat Armenia was founded, the main goal of which is to unite the potential of the Diaspora and support repatriates. Many people who have returned to Armenia state that they made their decision to repatriate within the framework of meetings with Repat Armenia.

Why did Avetik decide to get involved in politics?

After the war in April 2016, many things changed for him dramatically. From that time on, he knew that a new war was imminent and that we must be prepared for it, militarily and physically and spiritually. The obvious danger on the one hand and the obvious inaction on the other caused significant pain for him. His programs aimed at Artsakh and the army expanded after the 2016 war and continue to this day.

He decided to get involved in politics from the second half of 2018 because he saw a gap and realized that, only in that way, could he have a meaningful impact. Before that he tried to help remotely, but there was a condition from McKinsey that he should either be involved in politics or continue his consulting activities. He chose to work for the homeland.

Avetik was born in Armenia, studied in the US and worked and lived in Russia. He has no dislike for any culture or politics. Most importantly, his vision and activities are pro-Armenia and pro-Artsakh.

If you follow his interviews or articles, you will see that unfortunately his predictions and warnings have come true. Today, he has a vision for the country’s development – build a strong and stable army that will serve as a deterrent to our enemies and take every effort toward building a strong military, sparing little toward that goal. He has explored means to cooperate with various entities, including the Ministry of Defense since 2016.

Of course, many of these programs and initiatives are not discussed publicly, but informed people are aware of them. Avetik was doing everything for the army, for Artsakh and Armenia, but there came a moment when everything started to collapse before his eyes, and he simply could not but fight based on his character and values. We were ready for any kind of difficulty. We discussed all possible developments, including arrest and pressure and agreed that none would be an obstacle, because Avetik’s motivation is patriotism, and his work is for Armenia and Artsakh.