Category: News

Another Azerbaijani attacking drone was shot down in Artsakh at about 23:00 yesterday, the NKR Defense Ministry reports.

Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan met with the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs Igor Popov, James Warlick and Pierre Andrieu, and the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk.

The meeting was dedicated to the recent Azerbaijani aggression against the Nagorno Karabakh Republic.

Minister Ohanyan referred to the military actions at the line of contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan and the current situation.

Seyran Ohanyan drew the attention of the Co-Chairs to the peculiarities of Azerbaijan’s obvious aggression, including the war crimes against Armenian servicemen and civilians, as well as other violations of provisions of the law of armed conflict.

The Defense Minister noted that the Azeri military aggression was rebuffed and the further actions were prevented thanks to the heroic and skilled actions of the NKR Defense Army.

The Minister said Armenia is still ready to continue negotiations on the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

The Armenian Minister stressed the need of reinforcing any ceasefire with a legally binding agreement as a prerequisite for easing the military confrontation in the conflict zone.

Henrikh Mkhitrayan wore an Armenian armband during Borussia Dortmund’s Europa League match against Liverpool.

“Played plenty of thoughts for my motherland tonight ‪#‎Armenia,” Henrikh wrote on social media after the match.

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Liverpool held Borussia Dortmund to a 1-1 draw in the first leg of the Europa League quarterfinal as Jurgen Klopp made an emotional return to Signal Iduna Park.

Divock Origi opened the scoring for Liverpool. The hosts’ equalizer came within three minutes of the restart when Mats Hummels was allowed a free run at Mkhitaryan’s right-wing cross to power a header past Mignolet.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian had a meeting with CSTO Secretary General Nikolay Bordyuzha today.

The Armenian FM briefed CSTO Secretary General on the situation established as a result of Azerbaijani offensive against Nagorno Karabakh.

During the meeting reference was made to Armenia’s presidency of the CSTO, a number of issues on the organization’s agenda.

The interlocutors exchanged views on the schedule of future meetings within the framework of the CSTO.

Russia will continue delivering weapons to Azerbaijan as its strategic partner under existing contracts, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday, TASS.

The Russian vice-premier thus commented on a journalists’ request to comment on a statement by the Armenian President that Russia had supplied a large amount of weapons to Azerbaijan and specify if Russia planned to continue these deliveries.

“Everything is done in compliance with the contracts. Both countries [Armenia and Azerbaijan] are our strategic partners,” Rogozin said.

On April 8, Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian participated in the session of the CIS’ Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Moscow.

The Foreign Ministers discussed the CIS activity and range of issues to improve its efficiency.

Foreign Minister of Armenia delivered a statement at the session. Touching upon the military actions unleashed by Azerbaijan against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), Edward Nalbandian, said, “From the years of establishment, the Commonwealth of Independent States set forth its role in economic, cultural-scientific, political and other processes, however, not always living up to the expectations. Prevention of negative expressions has not been achieved on a range of fundamental issues, including in security. The Nagorno-Karabakh issue is one of the vivid expressions. Not only have the developments happening in recent days caused human losses and deterioration of the crisis, not only are they fraught with long-term destabilization, but also they may become a new challenge to the International as well as humanitarian law, not only to the United Nations’ Charter, other fundamental documents, but also the CIS Charter, which also contains articles on peaceful settlement of disputes and conflicts.

What happened is a consequence of the fact that not everyone in the CIS in practice shares this approach. Large-scale military offensive unleashed by Azerbaijan in the recent days against Nagorno-Karabakh not only violates the 1994 permanent Trilateral Ceasefire Agreement and 1995 Agreement on the Consolidation of the Cease-fire Regime. By the way, the former was initiated in the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly. From the early hours of the unleashed attack, civilian infrastructures were intentionally and overtly targeted, civilians suffered, including children and the elderly.

The calls of the international community for the settlement of the issue through peaceful means were grossly neglected. It is obvious that all this seriously damages the negotiation process and the efforts of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs.

On numerous occasions we have drawn the attention of the international community urging to curb Baku’s military ambitions having in mind exactly such a development of the situation.

Today more than ever the imperative is in the efforts for finding of solutions to exclude in the future of reoccurrence of what happened, to refuse from undertaking explosive attempts on seeking military solution to the issue, to secure exclusively peaceful settlement of the issue.”

Reflecting on possible reforms and increase of the Organization’s efficiency, Minister Nalbandian said, “We would like everyone in the CIS to realize to the same extent their responsibility for preservation and future of this space. Improvement of the CIS activity would certainly contribute to that. It is important to determine what a CIS we would like to see. Multi-lateral structure is attractive when it is effective with distinct mutual commitments, clear preferences and non-exaggerated structure of sectoral cooperation, duplicating each other on a number of issues.

From our point of view, the decisions on deepening of cooperation in this or that field are worthwhile taking, given the level of real interest of the member-states. I would like to emphasize, real rather than declarative readiness to cooperate via CIS’s resources. Today we face a situation when certain member-state signs only 10 percent of the documents adopted, 90 percent of which with reservations.

With only a few members expressing an interest in cooperation in this or that area, who at the same time are members of other integration and other associations, submission of an issue in the CIS format requires thorough examination. Simultaneously, this approach could not lead to curtailing of cooperation in the mentioned fields within the existing legal framework.

It is reasonable to continue making an inventory on the legal framework, defining clear mechanisms for the implementation of the following principles:
-mandatory rotation of quota positions,
-level of responsibility and accountability of CIS’ structures and bodies for drafting of documents, which enables reduction of a number of meetings with participation of experts from capitals,
-optimization of rule-making activity,
-exclusion of duplication of similar functions, etc.

Yet again I would like to underline, that Armenia pursues a positive agenda in the CIS. We spare no effort to translate into practical life all the positive experience gained within this format of cooperation and provide modernization of CIS in accordance with today’s realities.

Concluding my remarks, I would mention readiness to support drafts of more than dozen documents on different aspects of cooperation agreed upon for the session.”

All hostilities will be ceased along the line of contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan between 3 to 8 p.m. Yerevan time, Spokesman for the NKR Defense Army Senor Hasratyan told Public Radio of Armenia.

The silence will allow the parties to recover the bodies of the killed soldiers.

The search for the bodies will be carried out with the assistance of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“The search for the bodies continues, no ceasefire violation has been registered,” Spokesman for the NKR Defense Army Senor Hasratyan told Public Radio of Armenia.

He said that the “period of silence” announced at 3 p.m. will be maintained until 8 p.m.

The parties agreed to cease all hostilities today to search for the bodies of the killed soldiers.

A peacekeeping mission in the area of the Karabakh conflict may be possible only after a political settlement is achieved there, Russia’s Ambassador to OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said on Friday, TASS reports.

“The measures of supporting trust between the parties in the region of the Karabakh conflict is a key task after the ceasefire regime comes into force,” he said.

Speaking about a peacekeeping element in the conflict area, he said the “conflict in Nagorno Karabakh is an exclusive responsibility of OSCE, and all other organisations may only favour efforts of that organization.”

“The ideas of a peacekeeping mission, which may be possible only after a political settlement for supporting peace in the region, have been outlined a certain time ago,” he said. “A group of military planning, which unites experts, has put together parameters for a possible peacekeeping mission.”

“What it will be like, in what formats – as yet those are only areas on the maps, where experts show how the peacekeeping mission’s shape could look like,” the Russian diplomat said. “If it comes to that, it would be historic experience for OSCE. However, this all is in theory now.”

He said it would be more important now to enforce the monitoring teams in the area to fix how ceasefire is observed along the line of engagement.

The large-scale offensive operations unleashed by ‪Azerbaijan‬ against Nagorno-‪‎Karabakh‬ in recent day not only violate the Ceasefire Agreement, signed by the latter in 1994, and the Trilateral Agreement on theconsolidation of ceasefire regime signed 1995, but are also accompanied with gross violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, the Armenian Foreign Ministry says.