14:20,
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Ambassador to Greece Tigran Mkrtchyan has been concurrently appointed Ambassador to Albania, according to the decree signed by the President of the Republic.
The President signed the respective decree based on the proposal of the Prime Minister.
14:54,
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a phone call on Friday that Kyiv was attempting to stall peace talks with Russia but that Moscow was still keen to continue negotiations, Reuters reported citing a press release from the Kremlin.
“It was noted that the Kyiv regime is attempting in every possible way to delay the negotiation process, putting forward more and more unrealistic proposals,” Reuters quoted a readout issued by the Kremlin.
“Nonetheless the Russian side is ready to continue searching for a solution in line with its well-known principled approaches.”
15:03,
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu held a phone conversation with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, Milliyet reported.
The situation in Ukraine was discussed during the phone talk.
A day before Cavusoglu and Kuleba held a meeting in Lviv.
Before traveling to Ukraine, the Turkish FM visited Russia and held several meetings with government officials.
After the visits, Cavusoglu said that he has higher hopes for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
By its decision of 9 March in the Virabyan group of cases the Committee of Ministers welcomed the adoption by Armenia in 2021 of the new Criminal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure which will enter into force in July this year.
This new legislation addresses multiple issues raised by ECHR judgments in cases concerning notably torture in law enforcement and unlawful detention. It eliminates statutes of limitation for torture, provides for additional procedural guarantees against ill-treatment and unlawful detention, as well as for fair trial safeguards.
The importance of rapid adoption of this legislation had been highlighted by the Committee of Ministers on several occasions in its decisions related to the Mushegh Saghatelyan, Virabyan and Muradyan groups of cases. The Council of Europe supported the preparation of the new codes with legal expertise in order for them to be aligned with the ECHR standards.
“The twenty-third day of the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people to the Russian military invasion continues. Continuing attempts to restore the combat capability of individual units involved in hostilities, the military leadership of the russian federation plans to transfer to Ukraine some units from the 102-nd Russian military base in Armenia,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine posted on Facebook.
As noted, the refusal of some servicemen of the russian federation to take part in hostilities is confirmed, which is due to the low level of moral and psychological condition of the russian occupiers after the clashes with the Ukrainian defense forces. Thus, in particular, at the permanent deployment point of the 20th Motorized Rifle Division of the 8th All-Military Army of the Southern Military District, about 130 servicemen refused to take part in hostilities. The enemy personnel was demoralized, suicides and self-mutilation became more frequent.
“Due to the lack of positive results and inability to fulfill the set tasks, it is planned to remove Colonel Vadym Pankov, commander of the 45th special brigade of the special purpose air force of the russian Armed Forces. He is accused of failing to perform a combat mission at Hostomel airfield,” reads the report.
Meanwhile, the pro-government russian media continue to spread false information about the armed aggression of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine. The creation and distribution of staged propaganda videos through all available information channels, including in the countries of the European Union and the United States, in order to discredit the activities of the military-political leadership and the Defense Forces of Ukraine continues.
In the city of Dzhankoi, in the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, training in local secondary schools has been suspended with their further use to accommodate servicemen of the armed forces of the russian federation arriving in the city.
In the Chernihiv region, russian occupiers are intimidating locals to quell civilian resistance.
The occupiers continue to defiantly violate the norms of international humanitarian law and destroy the infrastructure of cities, creating the preconditions for deepening the humanitarian crisis.
The Defense Forces of Ukraine continue step by step to liberate the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine in all directions, the General Staff stressed.
As reported, the total combat losses of the enemy from February 24 to March 18 are about as follows: 14,200 people, 450 tanks, 1,448 armored combat vehicles, 205 artillery systems, 72 MLRS, 43 air defense units, 93 aircraft, 112 helicopters, 879 vehicles, 3 ships/boats, 60 fuel tanks, 12 UAVs of operational and tactical level, 11 units of special equipment. Data are being updated. The calculation is complicated by the high intensity of hostilities.
Azerbaijan and Iran have signed a transit agreement that could have big implications for Armenia.
One of Azerbaijan’s key demands after winning the 44-day war in 2020 was for Armenia to allow it overland access to its Nakhchivan exclave, a piece of territory surrounded by Armenia, Iran and Turkey. Since Armenia surrendered, Baku has persistently campaigned for this route, which it calls the “Zangezur corridor” and which would run over Soviet-era railways and roads across Armenia’s Syunik province.
The November 10, 2020, ceasefire statement even included language that Russia would “guarantee the security of transport connections” between mainland Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan across Armenian territory.
Talks have stalled as tensions between the two nations continue to fester.
Nevertheless, it came as something of a surprise to observers in Baku when Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Rostam Ghasemi arrived on March 11 to sign a memorandum of understanding allowing for new trade and communications links connecting the East Zangezur region of Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan.
Little about the memorandum was made public, but the way Baku described it as a “corridor” suggests Azerbaijani vehicles will be allowed to cross Iranian territory without submitting to Iranian customs checks.
The terms provide for a new highway, a railway as well as unspecified energy infrastructure. Additionally, four bridges will be built over the Aras River, which defines the state border between Azerbaijan and Iran – two road and two railway bridges.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Ghasemi discussed how “the new corridor would be an important international corridor for both transport and electricity,” the president’s website said.
Official statements did not clarify which side would pay for the new infrastructure, but as the prime beneficiary, it seems most likely that Azerbaijan will foot the bill.
Aliyev has repeatedly demanded Armenia open a corridor across its territory since the end of the war. The president even threatened to use force should Armenia refuse.
In a statement to the media, the president’s senior foreign policy advisor Hikmat Hajiyev said that the new route through Iran “will put an end to Armenia’s years-long policy of blockade of Nakhchivan.”
UK-based analyst Fuad Shahbazov believes that Baku will continue pushing for the path across Armenia, but that it “will most likely be postponed for some time.”
“What is seen is that the Azerbaijani government has decided not to wait for Armenia’s final stance on the [Zangezur] corridor as the former is more interested in strengthening regional cooperation,” Shahbazov wrote for BBC Azerbaijani.
Relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have run hot and cold for years. Last autumn, Baku and Tehran were hurling insults at each other in an unprecedented bout of saber-rattling. A few months later they agreed to a deal to swap natural gas along with Turkmenistan.
PanARMENIAN.Net – Armenian Human Rights Defender Kristinne Grigoryan on Friday, March 18 detailed the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) to the UN’s Resident Coordinator in Armenia Lila Pieters Yahia.
The Human Rights Defender weighed in on the interruption of gas supplies to Artsakh for more than a week and Azerbaijan’s obstruction of the restoration of the outage, as a result of which over 100,000 people were deprived of heating in cold weather conditions.
Grigoryan also presented the situation in the border villages of Artsakh, the acts of intimidation by the Azerbaijani armed forces against the population of the village of Khramort and a number of other settlement, accompanied by intense shootings, which have unfortunately resulted in injuries among civilians.
100,000 residents in Karabakh have been deprived of gas for over a week now, and because the pipeline has been damaged in territories currently under Baku’s control, the Azerbaijani military won’t allow the Armenian side to eliminate the problem.
The Azerbaijan armed forces have also been violating the ceasefire and using loudspeakers to spread panic among the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, attempting to force them to leave their homes.