15:59,
YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Russia will convey to Azerbaijan the Armenian side’s proposals over the delimitation and demarcation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press briefing.
“Yesterday I spoke with my Armenian counterpart, who has new proposals. We will relay [the proposals] to Baku. We must achieve a swift launch of the commission,” he said.
PanARMENIAN.Net – Human Rights Defender Arman Tatoyan on Wednesday, January 5 released a statement on serious threats to the rights and security of Armenia’s population throughout 2021.
Tatoyan, in particular, mentioned top officials who claimed that “Azerbaijani servicemen deployed near our villages and on the roads are in the territory of Azerbaijan and that Armenia can do nothing about it.”
According to him, the statements of said officials have legitimized the criminal actions of Azerbaijan against the population of Armenia and created new obstacles that will need to be overcome in the long run.
“These high-ranking officials have made such statements [at least] in order to avoid or alleviate internal political grievances against themselves. In other words, these are classic examples of how the country’s security and human rights can be harmed for political interests,” Tatoyan wrote.
The Ombudsman reminded that Azerbaijani soldiers have been carrying out atrocities against Armenians, adding, however, that the state has an obligation to protect people and that officials have no right to harm that process.
The displaced residents of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) are holding a protest Tuesday in front of the main building of the government of Armenia.
They demand the return to Artsakh’s Hadrut region, and the provision of a refugee status as well as of housing and social benefits to the displaced Artsakh residents.
Dr. Artyom Tonoyan
After almost two years, the Zohrab Center has now returned to in-person meetings at the Armenian Diocese in New York, said director Dr. Jesse Arlen, happily welcoming a sizable crowd for the book presentation of the Russian press coverage of the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis by Dr. Artyom Tonoyan in November. The lecture was streamed on Zoom and YouTube.
Arlen, who is also a postdoctoral research fellow in Armenian Christian Studies at Fordham University, called it important to “gather in person to talk, listen, think deeply and appreciate experts’ presentations on how to engage most effectively with the homeland and Armenian culture. We have had virtual events, but there is something different about getting together in-person, after having spent so much time separated from one another.”
Dr. Tonoyan, the author of Black Garden Aflame: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict in the Soviet and Russian Press, said that though Russian President Putin was “interested in tranquility along its southern borders, he was not going to interfere in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict militarily on the side of its regional ally Armenia.”
In spite of the fact that Russia has treaty obligations with Armenia, they can only be activated if Armenia itself comes under attack, and since Nagorno-Karabakh has been internationally recognized as a part of Azerbaijan, Russia would not get involved. In addition, there were questions of whether PM Nikol Pashinyan had strayed away from Russian dependency and was leaning more to the West geopolitically.
However in 1988, nationalism and ethnic grievances reared their heads, the speaker continued. In Sumgait, pogroms and wanton violence raged against mostly Armenian-populated towns by Azeri thugs. Hundreds of Armenians were brutally murdered in Kirovabad, Khodzhaly, Maragha and Baku by Azeri mobs and troops, resulting in the exodus of Armenians from Azerbaijan.
Simultaneously, a group of Armenian intellectuals from Nagorno-Karabakh had started a campaign to redress what they considered a historical injustice that Stalin had perpetrated in 1921 and reverse the overwhelmingly Armenian populated Nagorno-Karabakh from Azeri jurisdiction to Armenian control. They stipulated that the area had suffered greatly both culturally and economically.
Dynamics Change
“Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moscow’s influence over the anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan and the conflict dynamics in Nagorno-Karabakh diminished as Russia turned more or less inward, seeking to solve its many domestic problems and deal with new foreign policy challenges that would account for its weakened international standing,” Tonoyan explained.
In Nagorno-Karabakh where Armenians were fighting to regain the territory, Azeri victories from 1991 were reversed by 1992 by poorly planned and executed Azeri operations, and by the spring of 1994 Armenians had taken full control of Nagorno-Karabakh, except for Shahumyan and seven Azerbaijani regions. However, Armenians controlled the important towns of Kelbajar and Lachin.
A Fragile Ceasefire – “No War, No Peace”
“Exhausted by the cascading defeats on the ground, and fearful of continuing political instability and social unrest, Azerbaijan pressed for a Russian-brokered ceasefire in May 1994. Although fragile, the ceasefire would largely hold for the next two decades,” declared the speaker. “International mediation efforts led chiefly by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group co-chairs (Russia, the US and France) tried unsuccessfully to bring the conflicting parties to negotiate a lasting peace.”
It did not take long for increased tension to give way to a full-blown war. Azerbaijan, with increased oil wealth, amassed a huge array of advanced Israeli, Turkish and Russian weapons systems, and dismissive of western mediators they “first tested the waters in 2016 with its Four-Day War.” Hundreds were killed on both sides.
“If there was no meaningful international pressure on Armenia to cede territories, Azerbaijan was willing to take matters into its own hands, by fair means or foul,” Tonoyan stated, adding, “cross-border clashes were becoming increasingly frequent, deadly and ominous, a harbinger of things to come.”
With Pashinyan coming to power in 2018 with a fervent promise to reform Armenia’s politics and a sagging economy, “the result left much to be desired,” Tonoyan surmised. “Reform often meant a badly concocted mix of popular sloganeering, some democratic initiatives (and some clearly undemocratic ones), and made-for-TV arrests of long-feared politicians and oligarchs, and emboldened by this new confidence and a mandate from the people, Pashinyan set out to tackle the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh with Azerbaijan.”
In addition, Pashinyan insisted that any negotiated deal “must be equally acceptable to both Armenians and Azerbaijanis, something that previous Armenian governments were loath to voice publicly.” Making the “biggest unforced diplomatic error as prime minister, and providing Azerbaijan and its allies with fresh grounds for a renewed diplomatic onslaught,” “with characteristic bombast, he declared at the opening of the 2019 Pan-Armenian Games in Stepanakert, “Artsakh is Armenia, period!” The reaction in Baku was furious and “unforgiving.”
Bloody cross-border clashes followed in July 2020, including mass demonstrations in Baku with protesters demanding an all-out war against Armenia. The 2020 invasion of Artsakh by Azerbaijan with the assistance of Turkey was inevitable, Tonoyan declared.
Ignored by the West and Western Media
The South Caucasus, and especially Armenia and Artsakh “are not and have not been in the attention of the western media.” When the area is covered very infrequently, it involves either the subjects of tourism or war such as the case of Georgia/South Ossetia in 2008. “People do not know (or perhaps do not care) about the region until and unless something of note takes place,” Tonoyan said.
“Western journalistic interests probably match the general or even the precise contours of Western geopolitical interests in the region.”
And as far as Russia is concerned, he stated that “Moscow’s knowledge of the region is as strong as it is permanent, dictated mainly by geopolitical interests, and depending on the political (and increasingly geopolitical) winds blowing in the region, Moscow has at times favored Yerevan, and at other times Baku. But in all circumstances it has favored Moscow!” This is well understood by most observers and analysts.
Laurence Broers, co-editor in chief of the Caucasus Surveys, has commented that “despite its devastating human consequences on the global stage, the Karabakh conflict unfortunately remains obscure. Not so in the Russian-language press, including Pravda, Izvestia, Nezavisimaya gazeta and other papers by Russian and Soviet journalists.”
Broers writes that Black Garden Aflame is an “indispensable resource that brings to an English-speaking readership the shock and fury of the conflict’s outbreak in 1988, the inability of the broken Soviet system to contain it, the descent into war, the protracted ceasefire that followed, the multiple geopolitical interests in play and a catastrophic new war in 2020.”
A native of Gyumri, Armenia, Dr. Tonoyan received his PhD from Baylor University. A sociologist and a research associate at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, he has researched the sociology of religion, politics in the South Caucasus, and religion and nationalism in post-Soviet Russia.
First Deputy Minister of Defense of Azerbaijan, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Colonel General Kerim Veliyev today inspected the military units deployed in the Lachin region.
As reported Azerbaijani presses, citing the press service of the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan, “during a meeting with the personnel performing service in poor weather, the chief of the General Staff gave assignments for further increase of combat-readiness and maintenance of combat-readiness on the state border at a high level, including in the direction of Garagyol Lake. Later, the personnel of the military unit took part in a consultation during which the results of the year 2021. The participants of the meeting were told about the objectives that President of Azerbaijan, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev and the defense minister have set forth for the army, as well as the activities being carried out for improvement of the social and living conditions. Assignments were also given to improve the combat and official activities.”
“Garagyol Lake” is Sev Lake, one of the areas of the sovereign territory of Armenia that the Azerbaijani army has invaded.
Turkey has always posited three preconditions before Armenia to normalize relations: The territorial integrity of Azerbaijan—including Karabakh, the unconditional return of seven regions, and not to manifest enthusiasm in connection with the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide—or in other words, passing that matter on to historians. The second president of Armenia, leader of the opposition “Armenia” Bloc Robert Kocharyan stated about this during his year-end press conference Monday—and responding to Armenian News-NEWS.am’s question on how the process of establishing relations with Turkey today differ from the respective processes of his time in office.
“Now the precondition of the ‘Zangezur corridor’ has increased. Look at what happened to those preconditions. Our approach has always been the following: We [i.e., Armenia] are ready to build relations [with Turkey] without preconditions. Even when they were talking from the border, we were saying the [Armenian-Turkish] border is open on our side, closed on the other side. What happened to those three preconditions?
Let’s start with the second. Not [just] seven districts were returned, but [also] Shushi and Hadrut [cities of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)]—with a bonus. In fact, this precondition no longer exists. In connection with the Genocide, Armenia is so weak today that to think it can succeed in the Genocide recognition matter, perhaps in the distant future, but today the Armenian authorities have left that issue entirely to the offices of the Armenian National Committee. Second, such matters may be petitioned to countries that may have a some interest in punishing Turkey at one time or another. There is no other resource. In fact, two of the three preconditions have been successfully resolved for them,” Kocharyan stated.
As for the precondition of recognizing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, ex-President Kocharyan reminded that before the Brussels meeting, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at the National Assembly that as of 2016, there is not even a theoretical option for Karabakh not being part of Azerbaijan.
“What does this mean? This means that yes, the first person of Armenia says that he does not see any option, any status outside [being part of] Azerbaijan. He reaffirmed it during this last press conference [of his]. Now all three preconditions [of Turkey] have been met [by Armenia]. And when they say we are ready to establish relations with Turkey without preconditions, it is difficult to invent a bigger hypocrisy. You have fulfilled all the preconditions; moreover, you are discussing the issue of the [‘Zangezur] corridor,’” Kocharyan said.
And reflecting on the Armenian-Turkish relations during his presidency, Kocharyan said: “In my time, yes, there were contacts. When [Turkish President] Erdogan’s party won the parliamentary elections in 2002, the first [Turkish] foreign minister was Abdullah Gul. There was a multi-faceted event with him in Madrid. [Then Armenian FM] Vartan Oskanian was quite excited. He called me and said that the Turkish side was ready for negotiations without preconditions. I said, ‘Vartan, I do not believe, they are still new [in power], they are ‘hot,’ they probably have not realized that Azerbaijan will hinder them. Do not make a big fuss about it, it does not turn out that we are creating expectations.’
Gul said ‘without preconditions.’ Do you recall they were putting forward a notion that ‘We are zeroing the problems with all our neighbors?’ As a result, they had much deeper problems with all the neighbors.
After the second meeting, Oskanian told me that they were somehow retreating [from the talks]. And during the third meeting, we completely returned to where we started. This was an encouraging moment in Armenian-Turkish relations, which lasted 6-7 months, no more.”
Armenian-Russian figure skater Adelia Petrosian has made history as the first female to perform two quadruple Rittberger jumps in a program.
The 14-year-old reached the milestone in the free skate at Russian Figure Skating Championships.
Earlier this season, Petrosian became the first female skater to perform a quadruple Rittberger in a women’s competition.
View the video at the link below:
21:35,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Unreasonable optimism should not be expressed over discussions and negotiations with Turkey and Azerbaijan, as there is no basis for that optimism, but the parties express a desire to discuss, talk, try to create a basis for optimism, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan said in an online press conference. “We are ready to pursue that path”, ARMENPRESS reports the PM as saying.
Armenia and Turkey have appointed special envoys․ Armenia will be represented by the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Ruben Rubinyan, and Turkey will be represented by the former Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Turkey to the USA Serdar Kilic. Their first meeting has not been scheduled yet. Pashinyan, however, expressed hope that the meeting will be scheduled as soon as possible. A rather long process is expected, and one should not have exaggerated expectations from one or two meetings in order to record a concrete result.
PM Pashinyan does not agree with the opinions voiced by the opposition that with the readiness of such negotiations Armenia has agreed to Turkey’s preconditions regarding the “Zangezur Corridor”. “Armenia has not discussed, does not discuss and will not discuss any issue in the corridor logic. In terms of relations with Turkey, if we ask the question in the logic of communications, the agenda of creating, building and shaping transit routes may be important for us. And if during our contact with Turkey it turns out that the expected opening of the communications can have a larger regional significance, it will be one of the key issues on our agenda. One of the issues will be, for example, the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border and the railway.
There are talks about the reopening of air communication, which we positively assess, we welcome, we hope that mutual flights will start. In other words, our expectation is the normalization of relations, but we must understand that we are dealing with a complex problem, which has many nuances and sensitivities. There is a lot of emotional attitude to the issue in the Republic of Armenia”, Pashinyan emphasized.
He added that all the Armenian authorities have said that they are ready to normalize relations with Turkey without preconditions, which means that the recognition of the Armenian Genocide has never been a precondition for normalization of relations with Turkey and opening of borders. According to the Prime Minister, the Armenian government has clearly stated its position on the issue of international recognition of the Genocide.
Pashinyan also noted that there ais no agreement or idea for meeting with the Turkish president, but if the negotiation process between the envoys goes on successfully, high and top level meetings can take place.
On a working visit to Armenia, Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization Stanislav Zas visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial, accompanied by Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Armen Ghevondyan and Armenia’s Permanent Representative to the CSTO Victor Biagov.
The guests were greeted by the director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Harutyun Marutyan, who presented the history of the memorial.
Stanislav Zas laid a wreath at the memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide. The guests then laid flowers at the eternal flame and observed a minute of silence in memory of the consecrated martyrs of the Armenian Genocide.
The Presidents of Russia and France Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron discussed the Nagorno Karabakh issue over the phone today, the Kremlin reports.
The parties expressed satisfaction with the stabilization of the situation and the efforts being made to establish a peaceful life, restore economic and transport ties in the region.
It was noted that Russia and France act synchronously on the issues and intend to act so in the future.
Vladimir Putin congratulated Emmanuel Macron on his birthday, the leaders also exchanged good wishes ahead of Christmas and New Year.