Friday,
Armenians Urged To Avoid Panic Buying
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - A supermarket in Yerevan, April 29, 2021.
The Armenian government on Friday urged the population not to stock up on food
staples, saying that they will not be in short supply despite the fallout from
Western sanctions against Russia.
The appeal came as many shoppers at supermarkets and grocery stores in Yerevan
bought unusually large quantities of flour, sugar and cooking oil mostly
imported from Russia.
The apparent panic buying followed Moscow’s decision to ban wheat exports to the
other members of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), including
Armenia, until September.
The Russian government said on Thursday that the ban will not hurt the four
former Soviet republics because they have already imported tax-free sufficient
amounts of Russian wheat for this year. The ban is designed to prevent wheat
re-exports to third countries, it said.
Armenia - A shopper carries two bags of flour outside a supermarket in Yerevan,
.
Armenia is especially dependent on imports of Russian wheat, which met more than
two-thirds of its domestic demand last year. Russia also accounts for 97 percent
of cooking oil consumed by the South Caucasus country and nearly half of its
sugar imports. Exports of Russian sugar were also restricted on Thursday.
Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian assured Armenians that shortages of these and
other basic foodstuffs are extremely unlikely in the months ahead.
“We are in touch with our Russian partners, and even if export restrictions are
imposed by the Russian Federation Armenia has all necessary resources to ensure
the food security of its population,” said Kerobian. “We call on citizens not to
create panic and make undue purchases.”
RUSSIA -- Farmers use a combine harvester as they harvest a wheat field in the
southern Russian region of Stavropol, July 9, 2014
The heads of two Armenian firms importing wheat, who asked not to identified,
were also sanguine about the Russian ban. They said they have already stored
enough wheat and could also buy it from other countries, if necessary.
Both Kerobian and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian predicted last week that the
conflict in Ukraine will push up food prices in Armenia, which already soared
last year. The economy minister spoke of a “serious challenge to our food
security” anticipated this year. He also urged Armenian farmers to cultivate
more land, saying that the price hikes will make farming “more lucrative.”
Tadevos Avetisian, an economist and opposition lawmaker, dismissed Kerobian’s
calls. He said that a lack of subsidies and other forms of government support
for farmers bodes ill for the country’s agricultural output.
Shelling Continues In Karabakh
• Marine Khachatrian
Nagorno-Karabakh - A view of the village of Khnapat, .
Azerbaijani troops are continuing to fire mortars towards villages in
Nagorno-Karabakh and impede natural gas supplies to the territory cut off
earlier this week, officials in Stepanakert said on Friday.
The Karabakh police said the Azerbaijani side targeted three villages bordering
the Aghdam district east of Karabakh, using mortars and heavy machine guns.
Nobody was hurt as a result.
One of those villages, Khnapat, was reportedly shelled throughout the day. A
local farmer, Barsegh Avanesian, had to run for safety when a mortar shell
exploded near his pomegranate grove in the morning.
“It landed about 300 meters from me,” Avanesian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“Another one exploded five minutes later.”
The shelling interrupted classes in Khnapat’s school and kindergarten. Children
attending them were evacuated by their parents, according to the school
principal, Lyudmila Mosiyan.
“We started classed as usual at 9 o’clock in the morning,” said Mosiyan. “We
heard the first explosions at around 10 a.m. We took the children down to the
bomb shelter right after hearing the powerful sound of a second explosion. Then
the parents came by car and escorted the students to their homes in an organized
way.”
Also shelled, according to the local authorities, was the neighboring village of
Khramort and adjacent farmland, the focal point of Azerbaijani gunfire reported
over the past week. Russian peacekeeping troops set up two mobile observations
posts there on Thursday in a bid to prevent further shelling.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has denied targeting civilians. It has accused
Armenian forces of firing at its troops deployed in the Aghdam district.
Karabakh leaders maintain that Baku stepped up truce violations late last week
as part of its efforts to spread panic among Karabakh Armenians and depopulate
the disputed territory. They have linked the shelling to an apparent explosion
that knocked out on Monday night the sole pipeline supplying natural gas to
Karabakh from Armenia.
Karabakh households, schools and other essential facilities remained without gas
for the fourth consecutive day. The authorities in Stepanakert said that
Azerbaijani troops are still not allowing Karabakh utility workers and Russian
peacekeepers to approach the site of the pipeline accident.
Citing the resulting lack of heating in Karabakh’s schools and kindergartens,
the authorities decided on Friday to suspend classes there for a week.
Meanwhile, Armenia continued to react very cautiously to what is one of the most
serious escalations of tensions in and around Karabakh since the 2020 war with
Azerbaijan.
Amid reports of continuing ceasefire violations there, the Armenian Foreign
Ministry reaffirmed Yerevan’s stated readiness to negotiate a “peace treaty”
with Baku. The ministry spokesman, Vahan Hunanian, said in the evening that it
will “probably” ask the U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk
Group to organize Armenian-Azerbaijani talks for that purpose.
Azerbaijan has been pressing for such a treaty ever since its victory in the
2020 war. Azerbaijani leaders say that it must commit Armenia to recognizing
Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh.
Russian-Owned Mining Giant To Suspend Operations
• Karine Simonian
Armenia - Open-pit mining at Teghut copper deposit, 20Dec2014.
One of Armenia’s largest mining companies belonging to a Russian bank sanctioned
by the West has decided to suspend production operations.
Several workers of the Teghut company told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday
that they have been notified that they will receive two-thirds of their wages
during a two-week leave that will start on Monday.
The workers, who did not want to be identified, said the company management has
blamed the stoppage on the Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion
of Ukraine. They said they are therefore not sure they will return to work two
weeks later.
Teghut is owned by VTB, one of seven Russian banks that have been excluded by
the European Union from the SWIFT messaging system underpinning global financial
transactions. Europe is the main market for copper and molybdenum ore
concentrates exported by the company.
Teghut’s chief executive, Vladimir Nalivayko, insisted that the mining giant
employing more than 1,100 people will be suspending operations in order to
refurbish its waste disposal facility and a pipe feeding it.
In written comments to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, Nalivayko was not drawn on the
impact of the sanctions on Teghut. He said only that the current
“political-economic situation in the world” has disrupted the company’s supply
chain.
Teghut mines copper and molybdenum in an eponymous deposit located in Armenia’s
northern Lori province. It was the country’s tenth largest corporate taxpayer
last year, with over 15 billion drams ($30 million) in various taxes contributed
to the state budget.
VTB’s Armenian subsidiary took over Teghut in 2019 after its previous owner
failed to repay a $400 million loan provided by the bank.
Two other, larger mining enterprises in Armenia are also owned by Russian firms.
EU Parliament Condemns Azerbaijan’s ‘Armenophobia’
NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- A view shows Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi (Shusha)
damaged by recent shelling during a military conflict, October 8, 2020.
The European Parliament has accused Azerbaijan of systematically destroying
Armenian cultural heritage in and around Nagorno-Karabakh as part of what it
sees as a “state-level policy of Armenophobia.”
In a resolution adopted late on Thursday, the European Union’s legislative body
also called on Baku to drop “territorial claims on Armenia” and restart talks on
determining Karabakh’s internationally recognized status.
The resolution was passed by 635 votes to 2, with 42 abstentions, one month
after the Azerbaijani government announced plans to erase Armenian inscriptions
from churches in areas retaken by Azerbaijan as a result of the 2020 war over
Karabakh.
Azerbaijan’s Culture Minister Anar Kerimov claimed that the churches had been
built by Caucasian Albania, an ancient kingdom that covered much of modern-day
Azerbaijan’s territory. He set up a working group tasked with removing “false”
Armenian traces from them.
Armenia condemned the move as an attempt to “illegally appropriate” Armenian
cultural and religious heritage. The U.S. Commission on International Religious
Freedom, a federal government agency, similarly expressed serious concern about
it.
Belgium - An EU flag flies in front of the European Parliament building in
Brussels.
The European Parliament also cited Kerimov’s decision. It said that “the
elimination of the traces of Armenian cultural heritage in the Nagorno-Karabakh
region is being achieved not only by damaging and destroying it, but also
through the falsification of history and attempts to present it as so-called
Caucasian Albanian.”
The Brussels-based parliament’s resolution strongly condemns “Azerbaijan’s
continued policy of erasing and denying the Armenian cultural heritage in and
around Nagorno-Karabakh.” The destruction of that heritage, it says, is “part of
a wider pattern of a systematic, state-level policy of Armenophobia, historical
revisionism and hatred towards Armenians promoted by the Azerbaijani
authorities.”
Armenian officials say that at least two Armenian churches in
Azerbaijani-controlled parts of Karabakh have been torn down since a
Russian-brokered ceasefire stopped the six-week war in November 2020.
NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- A view of an Armenian church in the town of Hadrut, November
25, 2020
They have also accused Baku of vandalizing Karabakh’s Holy Savior Cathedral
located in the Azerbaijani-controlled town of Shushi (Shusha). The 19th century
Armenian church was stripped of its conical domes and covered in scaffolding a
year ago. It was twice hit by long-range Azerbaijani missiles during the war.
There are also lingering concerns about the fate of the medieval Dadivank
monastery located in the Kelbajar district just west of Karabakh.
Although the district was handed over to Azerbaijan shortly after the 2020
truce, Russian peacekeeping forces set up a permanent post at Dadivank to
protect Armenian clergymen remaining there. For almost a year, the Azerbaijani
side has not allowed the peacekeepers to escort Karabakh Armenian worshippers to
the monastery for religious ceremonies.
Baku claims that Dadivank and just about every other church in the region is
“Albanian.” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev underlined this decades-long
policy in March 2021 when he visited a medieval Armenian church in Karabakh’s
southern Hadrut district captured by the Azerbaijani army. “All these
inscriptions are fake, they were added later,” Aliyev claimed there.
NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- An armored personnel carrier of the Russian peacekeeping
forces is seen at Dadivank Monastery, November 24, 2020
In December, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an “interim
measure” ordering Azerbaijan to “prevent and punish acts of vandalism and
desecration affecting Armenian cultural heritage.”
The European Parliament urged Baku to fully comply with the ICJ decision and
also allow another United Nations body, UNESCO, to send a fact-finding mission
to the region.
The parliament’s resolution also calls on Aliyev’s regime to “discard its
maximalist aims, militaristic approach and territorial claims on Armenia and
engage in good faith in negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group
on the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Aliyev has repeatedly said that Azerbaijan’s victory in the 2020 war put an end
to the Karabakh conflict. The United States and France, which co-head the Minsk
Group together with Russia, maintain, however, that the conflict remains
unresolved.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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