Tuesday,
Armenian Military To Get More Russian Warplanes
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan sit
in the cockpit of a Su-30SM fighter jet at an airbase in Gyumri, December 27,
2019.
Armenia’s Air Force will receive more Sukhoi Su-30SM fighter jets from Russia
soon, Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan said on Tuesday.
Four such multirole jets were delivered to an airbase in Gyumri late last month
less than a year after the signing of a relevant Russian-Armenian contract.
Financial and other terms of the deal are still not known.
Tonoyan said in February that Yerevan plans to buy eight more Su-30SMs in the
coming years.
The minister was asked on Tuesday by reporters when the next batch of the
advanced warplanes will be delivered to Armenia. “Soon,” he replied. He did not
elaborate.
The Armenian Air Force had no fighter jets until this year. It largely consisted
of 15 or so low-flying Su-25 aircraft designed for air-to-ground missions.
Su-30SM can perform a much broader range of military tasks with more long-range
and precision-guided weapons. It is a modernized version of a heavy fighter jet
developed by the Sukhoi company in the late 1980s. The Russian military first
commissioned such jets in 2012.
Armenia -- Newly purchased Sukhoi Su-30SM fighter jets carry out test flights at
an airbase in Gyumri, December 27, 2019.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian described their acquisition as a “turning point
for the security of Armenia” when he spoke at the Gyumri airbase on December 27.
He also noted that the Armenian military has received the “first batch” of
Su-30SMs.
According to Tonoyan and Pashinian, Armenia also acquired large quantities of
other Russian-made weapons in the course of 2019. Those include sophisticated
Tor-M2MK air-defense systems. The Defense Ministry in Yerevan has said that they
will “considerably” strengthen Armenia’s air defenses.
Russia has always been the principal source of military hardware supplied to the
Armenian army. Membership in Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO) allows Armenia to acquire Russian weapons at knockdown prices and even
for free.
Kocharian Lawyer Denies Secret Contacts With High Court Chief
• Naira Nalbandian
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - Aram Orbelian, a lawyer for former President Robert Kocharian, talks
to journalists, Yerevan, April 5, 2019.
A lawyer for Armenia’s jailed former President Robert Kocharian on Tuesday
denied maintaining secret contacts with Constitutional Court Chairman Hrayr
Tovmasian alleged by a close associate of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Deputy parliament speaker Alen Simonian claimed on Monday that the lawyer, Aram
Orbelian, has repeatedly visited the court building in Yerevan and discussed
with Tovmasian the criminal case against Kocharian. He said Tovmasian made sure
that those visits are not recorded in the court’s visitor logbook.
Simonian’s allegations came amid the latest war of words between Pashinian and
Tovmasian. The latter is under growing government pressure to resign. Pashinian
and his political allies have accused Tovmasian, among other things, of secretly
supporting the ex-president, who is standing trial on coup and corruption
charges strongly denied by him.
The chief of the Constitutional Court staff, Edgar Ghazarian, disputed
Simonian’s allegations and challenged the pro-government vice-speaker to
substantiate them. He said that the Armenian police, which guard the court
building, have full information about who visited it and when.
“I have never seen Mr. Orbelian at the Constitutional Court,” insisted Ghazarian.
Orbelian declined, for his part, to directly respond to Simonian. But he did say
that he stands by his relevant comments made in a June 2019 interview with
RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
The lawyer admitted at the time that he is related to Tovmasian. But he insisted
that he has not visited the court building ever since Kocharian’s legal team
began considering asking the Constitutional Court to rule on the legality of the
charges brought against the ex-president.
Pashinian makes no secret of his desire to see Tovmasian and most other
Constitutional Court judges replaced, having accused them of maintaining ties to
Armenia’s former leaders and hampering his judicial reforms. Pashinian’s critics
say that he is keen to gain control over the high court and thus tighten his
hold on power.
The prime minister told reporters on Tuesday that the standoff “will be resolved
soon.” He did not elaborate.
An Armenian law-enforcement agency indicted Tovmasian late last month on charges
of abuse of power which the chief justice rejects as politically motivated.
Colleagues Back Senior Doctor Prosecuted Over Child Adoptions
• Susan Badalian
Armenia -- The director of Republican Maternity Hospital, Razmik Abrahamian.
More than 200 obstetrician-gynecologists voiced support on Tuesday for the
director of Armenia’s main maternity hospital charged with arranging illegal
adoptions of Armenian children by foreigners.
In an open letter to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other senior state
officials, they described Razmik Abrahamian as an acclaimed and honest doctor
and questioned the accusations brought against him.
Abrahamian, his deputy Arshak Jerjerian, the director of a Yerevan-based state
orphanage, Liana Karapetian, and two other persons were arrested in mid-December
as part of a criminal investigation launched by the National Security Service
earlier in 2019. They were charged with having forced over a dozen pregnant
women to abandon their babies subsequently adopted by foreign nationals in
2016-2018 in return for bribes.
District courts in Yerevan ordered virtually all of the suspects released from
custody a few days later. Abrahamian was freed unconditionally while the others
were granted bail. Prosecutors decided to appeal against the court decisions.
In their open letter, Abrahamian’s colleagues and subordinates called for an
objective and impartial investigation. They also demanded its quick completion,
saying that the scandal is discrediting their profession and spreading distrust
in maternity hospital personnel.
“The court must decide whether or not Razmik Abrahamian is guilty,” said Georgi
Poghosian, one of the obstetrician-gynecologists. “This question must be solved,
the sooner the better.”
“If some people can violate [Abrahamian’s] presumption of innocence why can’t we
support our colleague?” said another signatory, Nune Shahverdian.
The letter also deplored “emotional” protests staged earlier this month by a
group of women who had lost their newborn babies in disputed circumstances.
The bereaved mothers were told by doctors years or even months ago that they
gave birth to stillborn babies. They say that they were never shown the bodies
of the newborns and believe the latter were born alive and sold to foreign
adoptive parents.
One of those women, Haykuhi Khachatrian, denounced the doctors who signed the
letter. “Before speaking out in support of Abrahamian, did they realize that
they are defending a doctor who has admitted wrongdoing in a bribery case?”
Abrahamian, 76, was charged in April 2019 with giving a bribe to then Deputy
Health Minister Arsen Davtian. Unlike Davtian, who was reportedly caught
red-handed in his office, the veteran doctor was not arrested at the time.
According to government data, a total of 54 Armenian children were adopted by
foreign nationals, most of them Italians and Americans, from 2016-2018.
Anti-Government Activists Detained In Armenia
• Robert Zargarian
Armenia -- Narek Malian speaks to journalists after being released by police,
.
At least three activists highly critical of Armenia’s current leadership were
briefly detained in Yerevan on Tuesday in what they denounced as a government
attempt to intimidate them.
They all were set free without charge after spending several hours in police
custody.
The Armenian police said two of the outspoken activists, Narek Malian and
Konstantin Ter-Nakalian, were detained on suspicion of illegal arms possession.
Both men shrugged off the explanation.
An amateur video posted on the Internet showed masked officers of a special
police unit toppling Malian to the ground outside his office in downtown
Yerevan, handcuffing him and pushing him into a car.
Another activist, Artur Danielian, was stopped by policemen while driving his
car and airing a live video address on Facebook. Danielian said after his
release later in the day that two of his associates were also forcibly taken to
a police station. He said they were told that they are suspected of drug
possession.
Some opposition figures and other critics of the Armenian government condemned
the detentions as arbitrary, saying the authorities are trying to stifle dissent
in the country.
Danielian and Ter-Nakalian are the leaders of the nationalist Adekvad movement,
while Malian leads a separate group called Veto. Both groups rely heavily on
social media in their campaigns against the government and Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian in particular.
They also take a dim view of the 2018 “Velvet Revolution” that toppled Armenia’s
former leadership and brought Pashinian to power. Malian worked as an adviser to
the former chief of the national police, Vladimir Gasparian, before the
revolution.
Malian ridiculed the police actions against him when he spoke to reporters after
his release. He accused the authorities of making “last-ditch attempts to keep
the situation under control.”
He also claimed that his arrest was demanded by the Armenian branch of U.S.
billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF).
The OSF and its alleged ties to the Pashinian government have been the main
target of Malian’s and Veto’s activities. In September last year, the group for
weeks picketed the OSF offices in Yerevan, deriding its employees and recipients
of OSF grants.
Earlier in 2019, the head of OSF-Armenia, Larisa Minasian, held a news
conference to decry “false allegations” about its activities made by Malian and
other anti-government activists.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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