Thursday, 
‘Ethnic Cleansing’ In Karabakh All But Complete, Says Yerevan
        • Nane Sahakian
        • Astghik Bedevian
Amenia - Refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh ride in a truck upon their arrival at 
the border village of Kornidzor, .
All ethnic Armenians remaining in Nagorno-Karabakh will flee to Armenia in the 
coming days, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Thursday, accusing 
Azerbaijan of practically finishing “ethnic cleansing” in the region.
“Analysis shows that there will be no Armenians left in Nagorno-Karabakh in the 
coming days. This is a direct act of ethnic cleansing and depatriation, and 
something we have been warning the international community about for a long 
time,” charged Pashinian.
He complained that international criticism of Azerbaijan, which went on a 
large-scale military offensive in Karabakh on September 19, has not been backed 
up by “concrete actions.”
“If declarations of condemnation are not followed by commensurate political and 
legal decisions, condemnations become acts of acquiescence,” he added during a 
weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
He spoke as a steady stream of Karabakh Armenian refugees crossed into Armenia 
through the Lachin corridor for the fifth consecutive day. According to the 
Armenian government, their total number reached 76,400 by 8 p.m. local time. The 
figure is equivalent to nearly two-thirds of Karabakh’s estimated population.
Nagorno-Karabakh - Refugees gather around a fire to warm themselves as they 
stuck in a jam of vehicles on the road leading towards the Armenian border, 
September 25, 2023.
The government pledged to help evacuate people remaining in Stepanakert and 
other Karabakh towns and villages. Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachatrian said 
many of them own no cars, trucks or other vehicles that would transport them to 
Armenia.
The government is planning to send a convoy of 35 buses to Stepanakert for that 
purpose, Khachatrian said, adding that Russian peacekeepers have agreed to 
escort it. He said the buses cannot head to Karabakh now because the 
50-kilometer road connecting it to Armenia remains clogged by hundreds of 
vehicles. It now takes at least 30 hours to drive from the Karabakh capital to 
the Armenian border, Khachatrian told Pashinian and fellow cabinet members.
In the Armenian border town of Goris, government officials and private 
volunteers kept scrambling to provide the arriving refugees with food, housing 
and other vital assistance. A spokeswoman for Pashinian said only 17,150 
refugees have accepted accommodation provided by the government in hotels, 
resorts and public buildings across the country. The prime minister announced 
later in the day that each refugee will receive a one-off cash payment of 
100,000 drams ($260).
Meanwhile, Baku has denied the accusations of ethnic cleansing and insisted that 
it wants to "reintegrate" the enclave's ethnic Armenian population into 
Azerbaijan. In a statement, the Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry urged ethnic 
Armenian residents to stay in Karabakh.
Armenia - Karabakh refugees board a bus near a Red Cross registration center in 
Goris, .
Russia, which has been criticized by Yerevan for its peacekeepers' failure to 
prevent the fall of Karabakh, suggested that the fleeing Karabakh Armenians have 
nothing to fear.
"It's difficult to say who is to blame [for the exodus.] There is no direct 
reason for such actions," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The exodus followed a Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the lighting 
Azerbaijani offensive. Under the terms of that agreement, Karabakh disarmed its 
army, paving the way for the restoration of full Azerbaijani control over the 
territory.
In line with the deal, Samvel Shahramanian, the Karabakh president, also signed 
a decree on Thursday disbanding all government bodies and saying that the 
self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh, set up in September 1991, will cease to exist 
on January 1.
The ceasefire also commits Baku to permitting the “free, voluntary, and 
unrestrained passage” of Nagorno-Karabakh's ethnic Armenian residents, including 
''servicemen who have laid down arms.” Tigran Abrahamian, an Armenian opposition 
parliamentarian who used to work in Karabakh, said that despite this provision, 
the Azerbaijani authorities have threatened to arrest some Karabakh Armenians.
“I know names but it’s very dangerous to publicize them now,” Abrahamian told 
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“The people remaining in Artsakh now, from ordinary citizens to the president, 
have the status of hostages,” he said.
Ruben Vardanyan, a former Karabakh premier, was arrested by Azerbaijani security 
forces in the Lachin corridor on Wednesday.
Armenia Moves Closer To Ratifying ‘Anti-Russian’ Treaty
        • Artak Khulian
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian greets Russian President Vladimir Putin 
at Zvartnots airport in Yerevan, November 23, 2022.
In what Russia called an “extremely hostile” move, Armenia’s leadership on 
Thursday took another step towards accepting jurisdiction of an international 
court that issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 
March.
The Armenian parliament’s committee on legal affairs gave the green light for 
parliamentary ratification by of the founding treaty of the International 
Criminal Court (ICC). This means that the National Assembly controlled by Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party should debate and vote on it next week.
The decision came amid a continuing deterioration of Armenia’s relations with 
Russia, which is increasingly calling into question the long-standing alliance 
of the two nations. The Russian Foreign Ministry listed earlier this month 
Yerevan’s plans to ratify the treaty, known as the Rome Statute, among “a series 
of unfriendly steps” taken by Pashinian’s administration.
Pashinian reaffirmed the ratification plans on September 24 as he blamed Moscow 
for Azerbaijan’s latest military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh and effectively 
accused it seeking to turn Armenia into a Russian province. He claimed that 
signing up to the Rome Statute would help to safeguard Armenia’s independence.
Netherlands -- The building of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, 
November 23, 2015.
The main official rationale for the ratification is to bring Azerbaijan to 
justice for its “war crimes” and to prevent more Azerbaijani attacks on Armenia. 
Pro-government members of the parliament committee echoed it as they backed a 
corresponding decision proposed by Pashinian’s government.
Opposition politicians and other critics counter that Azerbaijan is not a party 
to the Rome Statute and would therefore ignore any pro-Armenian ruling by the 
ICC. They say the real purpose of ratifying the treaty is to drive another wedge 
between Russia and Armenia and score points in the West which has accused Russia 
of committing war crimes in Ukraine. The ICC endorsed those accusations when it 
issued the arrest warrant for Putin in March.
Independent legal experts believe that the ratification will commit the Armenian 
authorities to arresting Putin and extraditing him to The Hague tribunal if he 
visits the South Caucasus country. Yeghishe Kirakosian, who represents the 
Armenian government in international legal bodies, denied this during a meeting 
of the parliament panel boycotted by opposition lawmakers.
Kirakosian claimed that Putin and other heads of state enjoy immunity from 
arrest and that the Rome Statute allows countries to sign bilateral agreements 
to ignore ICC arrest warrants. Yerevan offered to sign such a deal with Moscow 
in April, he said, adding that the Russian side has still not responded to the 
proposal.
Armenia - Yeghishe Kirakosian (center) speaks at a parliament committe meeting 
in Yerevan, .
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he is “not familiar” with the proposal 
cited by Kirakosian. Armenia’s ratification of the ICC treaty would be a move 
“extremely hostile” towards Russia, said Peskov.
“Moscow hopes that there will be sober-minded forces in the National Assembly of 
Armenia that will not rubber-stamp a decision that is obviously toxic for 
Armenian-Russian relations,” the Russian Foreign Ministry warned, for its part. 
The “political decision” to ratify the treaty is unacceptable to Moscow, it told 
the RIA Novosti news agency.
The ministry already warned on Monday that Pashinian is “making a huge mistake 
by deliberately trying to destroy the multifaceted and centuries-old ties 
between Armenia and Russia.”
Armenia was among 120 countries that signed the Rome Statute, in 1998. But its 
parliament did not rush to ratify the document. In 2004, the country’s 
Constitutional Court ruled that the treaty runs counter to several provisions of 
the Armenian constitution which guarantee national sovereignty over judicial 
affairs.
Pashinian’s government decided last December to ask the court to again look into 
the Rome Statute and determine its conformity with the constitution that has 
been twice amended since 2004. The court ruled in March that the Rome Statute 
conforms to the amended constitution. The ruling came one week after the ICC 
issued the arrest warrant for Putin.
Azerbaijan Indicts Former Karabakh Premier After Arrest
AZERBAIJAN - A screenshort of Azerbaijani government video of Ruben Vardanyan's 
transfer to a prison in Baku, .
Authorities in Azerbaijan brought on Thursday a string of criminal charges 
against Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian-born businessman and former 
Nagorno-Karabakh premier, one day after arresting him in the Lachin corridor.
Vardanyan, who held the second-highest post in Karabakh’s leadership from 
November 2022 to February 2023, was arrested at an Azerbaijani checkpoint on the 
main road connecting Karabakh Armenia as he fled the region along with tens of 
thousands of its ordinary residents.
Azerbaijan’s State Security Service said the prominent billionaire was charged 
with “financing terrorism,” illegally entering Karabakh last year and supplying 
its armed forces with military equipment. It said an Azerbaijani court remanded 
him in pre-trial custody.
Born and raised in Armenia, Vardanyan is a former investment banker who made his 
fortune in Russia in the 1990s and 2000s. The 55-year-old relocated to Karabakh 
and was appointed as its state minister last November shortly before Baku 
blocked traffic through the Lachin corridor. He made defiant statements during 
and after his short tenure, urging the Karabakh Armenians to resist Azerbaijani 
efforts to force them into submission.
Vardanyan is the first Karabakh leader arrested after last week’s Azerbaijani 
military offensive that paved the way for the restoration of Azerbaijani control 
over the Armenian-populated territory. There are growing indications that Baku 
is seeking to also jail other current and former Karabakh officials.
Nagorno Karabakh - Davit Babayan, 31March, 2022.
Davit Babayan, a well-known adviser to Karabakh’s current and former presidents, 
said on Thursday that “the Azerbaijani side has demanded my arrival in Baku.” He 
said he will turn himself in later in the day because he does not want to “cause 
serious damage” to other Karabakh Armenians who have not yet left the region.
In Yerevan, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian expressed serious concern at 
“arbitrary arrests” made at the Azerbaijani checkpoint. Without mentioning 
Vardanyan by name, he said the Armenian government will take “necessary steps to 
protect the rights of arbitrarily arrested individuals, including in 
international bodies.”
The government on Wednesday asked the European Court of Human Rights to order 
Baku to urgently provide information about Vardanyan’s whereabouts and detention 
conditions. The Armenian Foreign Ministry said it will do its best to try to 
secure the tycoon’s release.
Vardanyan, who renounced his Russian citizenship late last year, has been 
increasingly critical of Pashinian in recent months, repeatedly denouncing his 
recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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