Thrusday,
Top Russian General Again Visits Armenia
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian greets Colonel-General Sergei Istrakov,
the deputy chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, at the start of their
talks in Yerevan, . A top Russian army general met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Thursday
as he visited Armenia for the third time in nine months. An Armenian government statement said Pashinian and Colonel-General Sergei
Istrakov, the deputy chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, discussed
Russian-Armenian “military-technical cooperation,” an official term that often
relates to arms supplies. They also “exchanged thoughts on the current military-political situation in the
region,” it added without elaborating. Photographs released by the government’s press office showed that Defense
Minister Arshak Karapetian was also present at the meeting. The Armenian Defense
Ministry did not report on Thursday separate talks between Istrakov and
Karapetian or other Armenian military officials. Istrakov already visited Yerevan in January and July this year at the head of
Russian military delegations that held “staff negotiations” with the Armenian
army’s top brass. Armenia moved to further deepen its close military ties with Russia shortly
after the six-week war in Nagorno-Karabakh stopped by a Russian-brokered
ceasefire last November. Moscow has since deployed troops in Armenia’s Syunik
province bordering districts southwest of Karabakh retaken by Azerbaijan during
and after the hostilities. Meeting with Karapetian in Moscow in August, Russian Defense Minister Sergei
Shoigu said Moscow will continue to help Yerevan reform, rearm and modernize the
Armenian armed forces. “We can consider that the process of arms supplies to Armenia has started,” the
Russian defense minister said as he gifted his Armenian counterpart a dagger. According to the Armenian Defense Ministry, the two ministers reached “a number
of important agreements regarding forthcoming cooperation programs.”
Turkish-Armenian Relations ‘Discussed With Russia’
• Artak Khulian
• Tatevik Sargsian
Armenia -- Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia's Security Council, speaks
at a news conference, . Armenia is discussing with Russia ways of normalizing its relations with Turkey,
a senior Armenian official said on Thursday. “We have repeatedly stated that we are ready to start discussing … the
normalization of relations with Turkey,” Armen Grigorian, the secretary of
Armenia’s Security Council, told a news conference. “We are also discussing this
with our Russian partners, [talking] about how we can move forward in this
process.”
“I think it’s best to start that work because both we and the Turkish side have
pointed out that there are positive signals and we can start the normalization
of relations,” he said. Russia voiced support for a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement in early September,
with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying that Moscow is “ready to assist in
that in the most active way.” Lavrov cited in that regard Russian-mediated
efforts to establish transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan after last
year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey has since continued to make the establishment of diplomatic relations and
opening of the border between the two countries conditional on a resolution of
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan. “If Armenia demonstrates a sincere will to normalize its relations with
Azerbaijan then there will be no obstacles to normalizing relations between
Armenia and Turkey,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier this
week. He spoke during the inauguration of a newly built airport in Fizuli, a town
southeast of Karabakh recaptured by the Azerbaijani army during the six-week
war. Erdogan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also announced the official
start of work on a new highway leading to Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province. Aliyev claimed that the road will be part of a “corridor” that will connect
Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave via Syunik and also “unite the Turkic
world.” “Both Azerbaijan and Turkey are taking practical steps in that
direction,” he said. Yerevan maintains that a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement that stopped the
Karabakh war last November calls for transport links between the two South
Caucasus states, rather than permanent “corridors.”
“No issue with corridor logic is being discussed,” insisted Grigorian. He also
noted that Erdogan did not explicitly echo Aliyev’s demands for the “Zangezur
corridor” during his latest trip to Azerbaijan. Erdogan did mention the corridor last month when he claimed that Armenian Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian has offered to meet with him and discuss bilateral
ties. Earlier in September, the Turkish leader also cited Azerbaijan’s demands
for a formal Armenian recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over
Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian Government Rules Out Coronavirus Lockdown
Հոկ October տեմբեր 28, 2021
• Marine Khachatrian
Armenia -- People wear faces masks on a street in Yerevan, August 11, 2020. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian made clear on Thursday that his government has no
plans to impose lockdown restrictions despite record numbers of coronavirus
cases and deaths registered in Armenia. Pashinian said the government will instead step up its vaccination campaign and
push for greater mask wearing in the country. “Our strategy is as follows: we believe we should not opt for lockdowns and must
work in the two [other] directions,” Pashinian told a weekly session of his
cabinet. He spoke after the Armenian Ministry said that 2,307 infections and 49
coronavirus-related deaths were registered in the past day. Speaking at the cabinet meeting, Health Minister Anahit Avanesian said that all
of just over 3,000 beds set up for COVID-19 patients at 27 hospitals across the
country are now occupied. About 1,400 of the patients treated there now are in a
severe or critical condition, she said. On Monday, the government ordered Armenian universities to revert to online
classes and extended school holidays until November 7 in a bid to contain the
latest wave of infections. Avanesian said it is now considering delaying school
classes by another week. “The epidemiological situation in Armenia is extremely tense,” commented
Pashinian. He said Armenians may soon be required to wear masks not only indoors
but also in the streets. Most of them currently do not wear mandatory masks even inside overcrowded
public buses. The authorities essentially stopped fining them a year ago. Pashinian said the government will also strive to “expand the volume of
vaccinations.” They have already accelerated over the past month after the
authorities began requiring all public and private sector employees to get
inoculated or take coronavirus tests twice a month at their own expense. Nevertheless, Armenia continues to have the lowest vaccination rate in the
region. Ministry of Health data shows that 466,785 people in the country of
about 3 million received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine and only
about 210,250 of them were fully vaccinated as of October 24. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.