21:15,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. On October 27, Hungary's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó will arrive in the Republic of Armenia on a working visit.
The meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Hungary will take place in the Armenain Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which will be followed by a joint press conference of Armenain and Hungarian FMs.
14:29,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan will participate in the 4th Tbilisi Silk Road Forum.
Pashinyan is scheduled to deliver a speech during the opening ceremony on October 26, organizers .
https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1122576.html?fbclid=IwAR3Yl5qRKbWZEdeceWp8Twj8LHLJ8lhOFW3tkut87O8WUBly5cF6dB2hlkk
11:30,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 19, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian government will allocate 2 billion drams from the state budget’s reserve fund to provide the financial assistance of October to 40,000 forcibly displaced persons of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The decision was approved at the Cabinet meeting on Thursday.
“The government will provide assistance for six months, 40,000 drams for temporary accommodation and another 10,000 drams for utility expenses. The payments for the month of October will be allocated by this decision,” Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Narek Mkrtchyan said at the Cabinet meeting.
IN YEREVAN – Children are believed to be among those killed in the remote enclave of Azerbaijan that was the scene of a military offensive last month, as groups begin to collect evidence of possible war crimes.
Armenian organisations have started documenting the latest war crimes allegedly committed by Azerbaijan’s troops against former citizens of Nagorno-Karabakh.
On 20 September, a 30-year dream of independence for the autonomous mountain enclave within the borders of Azerbaijan, came to a spectacular and brutal end when officials in the capital of Stepanakert surrendered after a lightning attack by the regime.
On Sunday, the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev raised his nation’s flag over the capital in a ceremony reaffirming its control of the disputed region.
More than 100,000 ethnic Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as the self-declared Republic of Artsakh, have since poured into Armenia, many among them claiming to have been victims of abuses by Azeri forces.
“Within just the first 24 hours we had documented 18 cases of civilian murder,” said Arman Tatoyan, a former Armenian human rights ombudsman and founder of the Arman Tatoyan Foundation, which works to gather evidence of war crimes committed against ethnic Armenians.
“There are instances of several members of a single family being killed – in one such case, two children who were just ten and eight years old,” he said.
Efforts to gather hard evidence of atrocities has been complicated by the speed at which Nagorno-Karabakh refugees, afraid of remaining close to the border with Azerbaijan, have scattered deeper into Armenia since first crossing last week.
With an Azeri blockade having suspended the flow of desperately needed supplies into the region for 10 months before the evacuation, the dire humanitarian situation has also meant state focus is presently on addressing immediate needs, such as food, shelter and medicine.
“The primary challenge is these people have extremely pressing humanitarian issues,” said Mr Tatoyan. “In many cases their greatest concern is simply finding family members from whom they’ve been separated.
Refugees from Azerbaijan’s controlled region of Nagorno-Karabakh rest at a sports complex set up as a temporary shelter in the Armenian city of Artashat (Photo by Karen Minasyan/AFP) A displaced family from Nagorno-Karabakh sitting on a bed in a temporary shelter in Artashat, southeast of Yerevan, Armenia (Photo: Diego Herrera Carcedo/Getty Images)
“Interviews have been difficult because people are under immense stress. Of course the focus is on aid, but it’s also incredibly important to collect evidence because in a dynamic situation like this, information is very precious and once lost may never be found again.”
While formal documentation may face significant logistical challenges, allegations of atrocities are not hard to find among the newly arrived refugee population.
Alik Chilingaryan, 63, is staying at a temporary shelter in Goris, the first point of call for many refugees who’ve fled over the past week. Once able-bodied, he is now confined to a wheelchair after he claims Azeri soldiers targeted his village.
“We were under fire from drones, we were not prepared for anything like it. Four people died,” he said. “We were shot at by artillery. I was in my yard outside, and a rocket hit about 30 metres away from me. There was an explosion, and the wave threw me 15 metres with the debris piercing my legs.”
Artur Petrossian, 43, also claims his village was similarly a target of airstrikes, with missiles raining down on homes and even a school building. “I am now twice a refugee by Azerbaijan,” he said. “Once because of the 1990 pogrom in Baku [Azerbaijan’s capital], and now because of this latest attack.”
David Mashuryan, director at Goris Medical Clinic, said the hospital had admitted hundreds of cases of civilians injured by shrapnel over the past few days, a great many of which have required amputation.
“A lot of these people were in really very serious condition when they arrived,” he said. “After providing them with first aid, we often had to co-ordinate with the Ministry of Health to arrange their onward transport to medical facilities in [the Armenian capital of] Yerevan.”
After Azerbaijan’s attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia’s parliament voted yesterday to ratify the Rome Statute, the first step toward joining the International Criminal Court and opening the way for these alleged atrocities to be investigated and possibly prosecuted in the Hague at some point in future.
Armenia's President Vahagn Khachaturyan has signed the ratification of the Rome Statute, recognising the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) despite Russian warnings, a statement said Saturday.
Khachaturyan's office published the statement saying he signed the treaty "retroactively recognising the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court by the Republic of Armenia."
Armenian lawmakers voted in favour of the joining the ICC earlier this month.
The move has angered Moscow, as The Hague-based court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin over the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
ICC members are expected to make the arrest should Putin set foot on their territory.
Khachaturyan signed the ratification after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan skipped a summit attended by Putin in Kyrgyzstan this week.
Armenia says joining the ICC would allow it to investigate what it calls war crimes by Azerbaijan after Baku's offensive to retake Nagorno-Karabakh.
Relations between Moscow and Yerevan have soured since Baku's military operation, during which Russian peacekeepers did not intervene.
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20231014-armenian-president-signs-ratification-of-icc-membership-despite-moscow-s-ire
Absent Armenia will remain the elephant in the room as Vladimir Putin on October 13 completes his two-day visit to Kyrgyzstan with the main event on the agenda, a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the grouping of former Soviet republics.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan—who has questioned Russia’s worth as his country’s strategic ally and security guarantor since Moscow did nothing to stand in the way of the September military operation of Azerbaijan to retake the entirety of the Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway enclave—has refused to participate in the summit. He has also kept Armenia’s armed forces away from military drills currently taking place in Kyrgyzstan conducted by the Kremlin-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) defence bloc.
The operational name of those drills happens to be “Indestructible Brotherhood”. To Putin’s discomfort, the no-show of Armenian troops indicates the CSTO might be all too destructible.
Kyrgyzstan is a safe bet on the itinerary of Russia’s strongman, given that it’s not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which since March has been seeking Putin’s arrest for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia amid the Ukraine war. Armenia, on the other hand, has just ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC, meaning Yerevan would be obliged to arrest Putin should he set foot on Armenian soil. The trip to Kyrgyzstan is Putin's first known journey abroad since the ICC issued its international warrant for his arrest.
The first day of Putin’s trip to Kyrgyzstan brought talks with Kyrgyz counterpart Sadyr Japarov, lately accused by civil society leaders of building a highly authoritarian state that in some ways apes Putin’s Russia.
Putin also attended a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the founding of Russia's Kant military airbase outside Bishkek.
"This military outpost significantly contributes to boosting Kyrgyzstan's defensive power and ensuring security and stability in the whole region of Central Asia," said Putin, adding that he expected Moscow to expand its military and defence ties with Kyrgyzstan.
Putin, who will travel to China next week for the third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, puts in a considerable amount of effort reaffirming relations in Russia’s Central Asian “backyard”. He's no doubt well-informed on the renewed competition for influence in the region mounted by Russia, China and the Western powers since the Ukraine invasion shifted the geopolitical tectonic plates. Turkey also is looking to step up its presence in Central Asia.
At a meeting with Japarov, Putin underscored Russia's importance as the biggest investor in the Kyrgyz economy.
"Our country is the main supplier of oil products to Kyrgyzstan, we fully supply Kyrgyz consumers with gasoline [petrol] and diesel," Putin told a briefing, as reported by Reuters.
"Russia is one of the leading trade partners of Kyrgyzstan. Our trade turnover grew 37% last year to a record of nearly $3.5bn. In the first half of this year it grew a further 17.9%," Putin added.
"We very highly value the Kyrgyz-Russian strategic partnership and our relationship as allies," Japarov remarked.
Putin, in his comments, again returned to the fast growth in Russian-Kyrgyz trade. The difficulty with that, as far as the West is concerned, is the suspicion that much of it is based on Kyrgyz intermediaries providing sanctions-busting windows for Russian businesses, including, indirectly, defence contractors.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has thrust the perennial debate of territorial sovereignty against self-determination into the global spotlight. Nagorno-Karabakh has always been internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. However, the military means employed to reclaim it starkly contrasts with the diplomatic and multilateral approaches traditionally advocated for resolving territorial disputes.
In particular, the international community’s acquiescence to Azerbaijan’s capture of the territory raises questions about what its attitude is likely to be in situations where the same tensions between territorial integrity and self-determination rise.
Today, few countries recognize Taiwan as China’s legitimate representative, with most recognizing the People’s Republic of China. Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province, with President Xi Jinping instructing his armed forces to be ready by 2027 to annex the self-governing island.
The US has maintained strategic ambiguity on whether it would intervene militarily if such an eventuality were to come to pass. President Joe Biden’s statements on the issue, which have seemed to suggest that the US would intervene, have almost always been dialed back by his staffers.
16:44, 6 October 2023
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 5, ARMENPRESS. A Russian government official has met with the Mayor of Meghri in Armenia to discuss the upcoming opening of the Russian consulate-general in Kapan.
The head of the delegation in charge of the works from the Russian side and the Meghri mayor discussed the prospects of swiftly opening the consulate ‘which will significantly simplify access to consular services for Russian citizens living in Armenia’s south,” the Russian embassy said in a readout.
“In addition, it was noted that the new consulate-general will contribute to the further strengthening of Armenian-Russian relations and stabilization of the situation in the region, and will contribute to the expansion of cultural, humanitarian, trade, economic and inter-regional cooperation,” the Russian embassy in Armenia said.
The United Nations refugee agency said Saturday that it was seeking $97 million to aid the thousands of ethnic Armenians who have fled Nagorno-Karabakh after the lightning offensive by Azerbaijan last month.
The Armenia Refugee Response Plan aims to raise the funds by March 2024 to help an estimated 136,000 people who have fled the enclave for Armenia, and a further 95,000 people helping to accomodate them.
"This plan also takes into account the difficult winter months that are coming, when essential support will be necessary," the UN's office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.
"We are calling on the international community to urgently support the refugees and their hosts," refugee commissioner Filippo Grandi said.
He insisted on the immediate need to protect refugees from sexual violence and ensure food and health needs as well as housing.
The European Union will host talks between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan this month to try to reduce tensions between the arch-foes Armenia and Azerbaijan following Baku's lightning offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan took control of the region for the first time in three decades after a one-day offensive that sparked a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians.
https://www.barrons.com/news/un-seeks-97-million-for-armenia-refugees-fd574e69
18:07, 5 October 2023
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 5, ARMENPRESS.The observers of the European Union Mission in Armenia are talking to local people to report to the EU how the conflict is affecting people’s daily lives, the EUMA announced this on its X page.
As part of human security patrols, EUMA monitors regularly talk to local population, such as a shepherd from Navur village, to report to the EU how the conflict affects their day-to-day life. EUMA contributes to human security of local population at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border areas, the statement of the EU civil mission reads.