RFE/RL Armenian Report – 07/07/2020

                                        Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Aliyev Slams Karabakh Mediators

        • Heghine Buniatian

Azerbaijan -- President Ilham Aliyev speaks in Ganja, June 25, 2020.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has lambasted the U.S., Russian and French 
mediators trying to broker a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and said 
the most recent Armenian-Azerbaijani talks were fruitless.

In an interview with Azerbaijani television aired on Tuesday, Aliyev denounced 
the mediators co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group for reiterating last week that 
“there is no military solution to the conflict.”

“Their main point is that the problem cannot be solved militarily,” he said. 
“Who said that? We expect more serious, clear and targeted statements from the 
mediators.”

“In essence, no negotiations are held right now,” claimed Aliyev. “The video 
conferences of the [Armenian and Azerbaijani] foreign ministers are meaningless 
and are only leaving the impression that the Minsk Group exists.”

“As I have said before, we will not negotiate for the sake of negotiating and we 
want substantive negotiations without any change in their format. In that case, 
we will participate in them. Otherwise, I see no need for pointless 
negotiations.”

Foreign Ministers Zohrab Mnatsakanian and Elmar Mammadyarov as well as the three 
mediators most recently talked via video link on June 30. They reported no 
progress towards a Karabakh settlement.

In a joint statement issued right after the talks, the Minsk Group co-chairs 
said they urged the conflicting parties to “take additional steps to strengthen 
the ceasefire and to prepare the populations for peace.” They also said the two 
ministers agreed to hold another video conference in July and to meet in person 
“as soon as possible.”

Yerevan and Baku traded bitter recriminations both before and during the latest 
round of peace talks. Speaking at a June 25 meeting with Azerbaijani army 
officers, Aliyev described Armenia’s post-Soviet history as “shameful,” saying 
that his country’s arch-foe was for decades ruled by “criminals and thieves.” He 
also said that the 2018 popular protests that brought Nikol Pashinian to power 
were not a democratic revolution.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry hit back at Aliyev, saying that he leads one of 
the world’s most corrupt and repressive regimes which feels threatened by 
“democratic changes taking place in Armenia.”



Lack Of Quorum Prevents High Court Hearing On Kocharian Case

        • Naira Nalbandian

Armenia -- The main meeting room of the Constitutional Court, Yerevan, September 
3, 2019.

Armenia’s Constitutional Court did not make a quorum on Tuesday to start 
hearings on the legality of coup charges brought against former President Robert 
Kocharian.

The court has been in limbo since the Armenian parliament passed late last month 
constitutional changes calling for the immediate dismissal of three of its nine 
judges. They also stipulate that Hrayr Tovmasian must quit as court chairman but 
remain a judge.

Tovmasian and the three ousted justices have rejected the changes as 
unconstitutional, filing relevant appeals in the European Court of Human Rights 
(ECHR).

In what appeared to be a related development, Tovmasian and another remaining 
judge, Arevik Petrosian, went on vacation last week.

Consequently, the majority of the Constitutional Court members did not show up 
for a court session which was due to discuss the case against Kocharian along 
with several other issues.

Kocharian is prosecuted under Article 300.1of Armenia’s Criminal Code dealing 
with “overthrow of the constitutional order.” The accusation rejected by him as 
politically motivated stems from the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan that 
left ten people dead.

The current code was enacted in 2009. Kocharian’s lawyers maintain that the 
article in question cannot be used retroactively against him. They argue that 
the previous code, which was in force during the dramatic events of March 2008, 
had no clauses relating to “overthrow of the constitutional order” and contained 
instead references to “usurpation of state power.”

Prosecutors say that there are no significant differences between the two 
definitions of a crime allegedly committed by the man who ruled Armenia from 
1998-2008.

Kocharian’s legal team last year asked the Constitutional Court to declare the 
coup charge illegal. A Yerevan judge who initially presided over the 
ex-president’s trial likewise asked the court to pass judgment on the legality 
of the accusation.

The Constitutional Court in turn decided in July 2019 to request an “advisory 
opinion” on the matter from the ECHR as well as the Venice Commission of the 
Council of Europe. The Strasbourg-based court’s Grand Chamber released a lengthy 
and complex opinion in May, while the Venice Commission offered its assessment 
in June.

One of the six remaining Constitutional Court judges, Vahe Grigorian, was 
earlier barred by his colleagues from dealing with the Kocharian case. They 
argued that Grigorian cannot make impartial decisions on the matter because he 
had represented relatives of nine of the ten people killed in March 2008.

One of their current lawyers, Tigran Yegorian, demanded on Tuesday that 
Tovmasian and three other justices be also excluded from the high-profile case 
because of what he described as a conflict of interest and political bias. A 
lawyer representing Kocharian dismissed the demand, saying that Yegorian is not 
in a position to voice such demands.



Another Armenian Nursing Home Hit By COVID-19 Outbreak

        • Satenik Kaghzvantsian
        • Susan Badalian

Armenia -- The entrance to a nursing home in Gyumri, July 7, 2020.

At least 55 elderly people living in a nursing home in Gyumri have been infected 
with the coronavirus following similar outbreaks of the disease reported at 
Armenia’s two other elderly care centers.

A spokeswoman for the state-funded institution, Nune Grigorian, said on Tuesday 
that 37 of them have been hospitalized.

“We also have 12 infected personnel, one of whom was also taken to hospital,” 
she told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “The 18 other [infected residents] are 
asymptomatic and have been isolated along with the [infected] personnel.”

Grigorian did not deny reports that one of the elderly persons has died. “We 
don’t yet know whether [the death] was connected with the coronavirus because 
the patient suffered from a severe pre-existing disease: cancer,” she said.

The Gyumri nursing home has 160 residents and 66 employees looking after them. 
Grigorian insisted that its administration has followed anti-epidemic guidelines 
issued by the health authorities.

Armenia has only three nursing homes where a total of 580 retirees live and 
receive care and, if necessary, medical assistance. All of them were placed in 
strict lockdown in late February even before the authorities registered the 
first coronavirus case in the country.

One of these care centers located in Yerevan was the first to be hit by a 
COVID-19 outbreak in mid-May. At least ten of its residents infected with the 
disease reportedly died as of June 25. The Armenian Ministry of Health said on 
Monday that all others have already recovered and been discharged from hospital.

The other care home, also located in the Armenian capital, reported two dozen 
infections late last month.

Meanwhile, the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Armenia rose by 
349 to 29,285 on Tuesday morning. The Ministry of Health also reported that 17 
more people infected with the virus died in the past day.

The ministry said COVID-19 was the primary cause of 12 of those deaths. The 
country’s official death toll from the epidemic thus rose to 503.



Armenia Launches Production Of Kalashnikov Rifles


Armenia -- A worker shows Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian a Kalashnikov AK-103 
rifle assembled at the Neitron company plant in Abovian, July 7, 2020.

An Armenian company has started manufacturing advanced models of Russia’s famous 
Kalashnikov assault rifles which are due to be supplied to Armenia’s armed 
forces and sold abroad.

The Neitron company launched the production operations this month in line with 
an agreement reached by Russia’s Kalashnikov Concern and another Armenian-owned 
firm, Royalsys Engineering, two years ago.

A follow-up deal signed by the Russian small arms manufacturer and Neitron in 
May this year granted the latter a 10-year license to produce Kalashnikov’s 
AK-103 models designed in 1994.

Neitron executives told Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Tuesday that their 
company will assemble 50,000 such guns annually as they showed him around their 
new production facility located near Abovian, a town 15 kilometers north of 
Yerevan.

One of those executives, Igor Gordienko, told the Sputnik news agency last month 
that Neitron will initially use rifle parts supplied by Kalashnikov but plans to 
manufacture them as well in the future.

An Armenian government statement cited Pashinian as welcoming the development 
and saying that it was made possible by Armenia’s close military ties with 
Russia. The Russian ambassador in Yerevan, Sergey Kopyrkin, was among officials 
who accompanied the prime minister during his visit to the new Neitron plant.


Armenia -- An Armenian soldier shoots a Kalashnikov rifle during a military 
exercise in Vayots Dzor province, April 16, 2020.

According to the statement, the AK-103 rifles will be delivered not only to the 
Armenian army but also foreign buyers.

Kalashnikov’s older AK-74 rifles and PK machine guns have long been the army’s 
principal light weapons. The launch of Neutron’s new production operation 
suggests that the Armenian Defense Ministry plans to replace all AK-74s in its 
arsenal with the more modern AK-103 model.

The government statement also revealed that Neitron will pay $24 million to buy 
new Russian equipment for modernizing and expanding its separate production of 
Kalashnikov cartridges. In addition, it said, the company will start producing 
night-vision gun sights and surveillance devices for the Armenian military later 
this year.

Kalashnikov Concern opened an official representation in Yerevan in 2014 at a 
ceremony attended by then Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian. The latter stressed 
the importance of Russian-Armenian agreements allowing Armenian and Russian 
defense companies to supply each other with equipment, assembly parts and other 
materials needed for the production, modernization and repair of various weapons.


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