Tuesday, Azeri Drone ‘Shot Down In Karabakh’ Nagorno Karabakh -- An official photograph that purportedly shows the wreckage of an Azerbaijani military drone shot dow by the Karabakh Armenian army, September 25, 2019. Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian-backed army claimed to have shot down an Azerbaijani military drone on Tuesday. In a statement, the Defense Army said the Israeli-made drone was hit by one of its air-defense units early in the afternoon immediately after entering its airspace over a southern section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani “line of contact” around Karabakh. It promised to release photographs of the wreckage the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) “later on.” The statement also said that Azerbaijani warplanes, combat helicopters and UAVs have carried out more frequent flights near the heavily fortified frontline of late. It claimed that Azerbaijani drones have also repeatedly attempted to cross into Armenian-controlled territory “for intelligence-gathering purposes” and urged Baku to avoid such “provocative steps.” The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry did not immediately react to the claim. An Israeli company, Aeronautics Defense Systems, manufactures several types of Orbiter UAVs, including light-weight systems designed for reconnaissance missions and heavier attack drones. The Karabakh army did not specify which one of them it shot down. It had claimed to have destroyed an Orbiter 2 reconnaisance drone in September 2019. According to Israeli media reports, Aeronautics was working on a potential $20 million deal with Baku when Azerbaijani officials asked its specialists to demonstrate one of its “kamikaze” drones on a Karabakh Armenian army position in the summer of 2017. The reports said two Aeronautics employees refused to carry out the attack but higher-ranking executives of the company agreed to do so. The scandal led Israeli authorities to suspend Aeronautics’ export license. But they lifted the ban on attack drone exports to Azerbaijan in January 2019. Aeronautics reportedly opened an office in Baku a few months later. Government Vows To Repatriate More Armenians • Naira Nalbandian Armenia -- Deputy Foreign Minister Avet Adonts gives a press conference in Yerevan. The government will help to evacuate all Armenian nationals trying to return to Armenia due to the coronavirus pandemic, Deputy Foreign Minister Avet Adonts said on Tuesday. “As of April 21, 1,283 citizens applied to our diplomatic missions abroad to return to Armenia,” Adonts told a news conference. “They are from different countries: the United States, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, European countries, Middle Eastern states and elsewhere.” According to Adonts, about other 22,000 citizens have returned to Armenia since March 14. Some of them were repatriated on charter flights arranged and, in some cases, financed by the government. About 1,000 Armenians were flown to Yerevan from Moscow and two other Russian cities on five such flights carried out by Russian airlines earlier this month. All of them were placed under a two-week quarantine on their arrival in the country. Adonts thanked Russian-Armenian benefactors who paid for the tickets of most of those passengers, including women and young children, and offered free accommodation to other Armenians seeking repatriation. He also said: “We have been spending quite large resources on ensuring their health safety after their return. I first and foremost mean the quarantine which is mandatory for everyone coming back to Armenia.” Some 120 Armenians have been stuck at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport for the last several days, refusing temporary accommodation offers and hoping to catch the next emergency flight to Yerevan. Russian police forced them out of an airport terminal late on Monday. Adonts urged the stranded citizens to abide by coronavirus-related restrictions imposed by Russian authorities and avoid gathering at the airport for now. The Armenian Foreign Ministry will try to evacuate them “in the coming days,” he said. Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian announced afterwards that 18 Armenian nationals are expected to arrive from the United Arab Emirates later on Tuesday. Health Minister Urges More Efforts To Fight Coronavirus • Naira Bulghadarian • Karine Simonian Armenia -- Healthcare workers are seen outside the Nork hospital in Yerevan which deals with most coronavirus cases in Armenia, March 20, 2020. Health Minister Arsen Torosian called for “additional efforts” to slow the spread of coronavirus in Armenia on Tuesday after authorities reported the highest daily increase in infections in more than two weeks. The Armenian Ministry of Health said in the morning that the number of coronavirus cases rose by 62, to 1,401, while 29 other persons recovered from COVID-19 in the past day. It also reported two more fatalities which raised the country’s death toll from the virus to 24. Torosian said that official statistics for the last several days indicate a “steady” rate of new infections standing at 3-4 percent. “We also have approximately the same number of hospitalized people which varies from 700 to 800,” he wrote on Facebook. But the minister also said: “This means that we all must make additional efforts to lower the peace of the spread [of the disease] and have no right to relax and lose our vigilance.” “Especially worrying are recent days’ cases [of infection] among healthcare workers at medical centers in Yerevan and regions,” he added. “The use of personal protective equipment is far more important for healthcare workers than for other citizens.” Armenia -- Health Minister Arsen Torosian at a news conference in Yerevan, March 26, 2020. Hasmik Ghazinian, a senior doctor at Yerevan’s Nork hospital treating only COVID-19 patients, complained that many Armenians are not following social distancing rules or wearing masks or gloves when leaving their homes. She warned of a surge in infections in the days ahead. “Our doctors, medical personnel are acting heroically on the frontline [of the fight against coronavirus,] … but the rear (other citizens) does not seem to be safeguarding the achievements of the frontline workers,” Ghazinian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “I think the reason for this is that people are not taking [the epidemic] seriously and believe that it’s based on false information,” said Giorgi Kantaria, a doctor from the Surp Grigor Lusavorich hospital who is currently treating about 100 infected people quarantined at a Yerevan hotel. “I want to assure them that it’s real and their help is also necessary,” said Kantaria. “Doctors’ help is not enough.” Such appeals fell on deaf ears in the northern city of Vanadzor where more than 2,000 employees of a local textile factory defied a government to return to their workplaces on Tuesday one month after being put on unpaid leave. Police officers fined several of them but had to leave the Gloria company’s premises after being confronted by hundreds of mostly female workers. Armenia -- Gloria factory owner Bagrat Darbinian (L) argues with a police officer, Vanadzor, . The angry women said they want the factory to immediately resume its work because they are no longer able to support themselves and their families. They claimed that they have not received financial assistance allocated by the Armenian government to tens of thousands of people hit hard by economic disruptions resulting from the epidemic. Gloria’s owner, Bagrat Darbinian, insisted, for his part, that he did not tell his workers to report for work in the absence of a government permission. The government ordered the closure of most nonessential business in the country as part of a nationwide lockdown imposed on March 24. It allowed some of them, notably construction firms, to resume their work on April 13. The permission is supposedly conditional on their compliance with coronavirus-related safety rules Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced last week plans to also reopen other sectors of the Armenian economy, including the textile industry, on April 20. However, the government appears to have delayed that decision at least until next week. Armenian Church Rejects Fresh Criticism From Pashinian Armenia - Catholicos Garegin II (C) celebrates a Christmas mass at the Echmiadzin cathedral of the Armenian Apostolic Church, 6 January 2015. The Armenian Apostolic Church rebutted on Tuesday a scathing attack on its top clergymen launched by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. Pashinian on Monday listed the church among those groups -- including the former ruling regime, “oligarchs,” many media outlets and “some Diaspora structures” -- who he said are upset with his government. He claimed that the government’s policies are causing “very serious disappointment” among the clergy because they are exposing a “lack of spiritual life in Armenia.” Pashinian also accused the church of frequently meddling in politics and hatching “political intrigues” instead of engaging in “activity stemming from the Bible and its ideology.” The Echmiadzin-based office of the church’s supreme head, Catholicos Garegin II, responded by saying that it disagrees with Pashinian’s “evaluations.” But it said that it will not comment on them further now that the country is about to mark the 105th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. A statement released by the Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin also cited Garegin as calling on all Armenians to “steer clear of discord and speculations” and instead ask the genocide victims for “intercession” for the sake of “overcoming existing challenges in national life.” Armenia - Catholicos Garegin II meets with the Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in the Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin, November 14, 2018 Tension between the ancient church and Pashinian’s political team rose dramatically last week after Garegin called for the release on health grounds of the jailed former President Robert Kocharian. The latter is standing trial on coup and corruption charges rejected by him as politically motivated. Garegin said on April 14 that Kocharian and other criminal suspects “not posing a threat to the society” should be set free for now because they risk being infected with coronavirus in prison. The remarks prompted angry reactions from Pashinian’s political allies and supporters. Some of them, notably deputy parliament speaker Alen Simonian, demanded Garegin’s resignation. Simonian also accused the Catholicos of putting pressure on courts. On April 15, the National Security Service (NSS) said that it has brought fraud and money laundering charges against Archbishop Navasard Kchoyan, the controversial head of the church’s largest diocese encompassing Yerevan and southern Ararat province. Kchoyan denied the charges. The Mother See urged government officials and media to respect Kchoyan’s presumption of innocence. It also described as “bewildering” the fact that the NSS announced the indictment one day after Garegin urged Kocharian’s release. Several senior clergymen pushed back against the harsh criticism in the following days, accusing government loyalists of being disrespectful towards a religious institution to which the vast majority of Armenians nominally belong. They were backed by conservative groups, some mainstream opposition figures and other critics of the current government. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2020 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.