Monday, Provincial Governor Resigns • Ruzanna Stepanian Armenia -- The newly appointed governor of Syunik, Hunan Poghosyan, addresses a rally in the province, October 19, 2018. Hunan Poghosian, the governor of Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province, tendered his resignation on Monday. An aide to Poghosian, Armine Avagian, gave no reason for the move. Avagian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that Poghosian will continue to perform his duties until the Armenian government appoints a new governor of the mountainous region bordering Iran and Azerbaijan. Poghosian’s resignation was announced as the Armenian side essentially completed its withdrawal from districts around Nagorno-Karabakh in line with a Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the Karabakh war on November 10. Syunik borders three of those districts: Lachin, Kubatli and Zangelan. Some Syunik border sections became new Armenian-Azerbaijani frontlines as Azerbaijani troops reached and advanced through those districts in October. They shelled several Syunik villages, killing and wounding several local residents. Poghosian signaled his intention to resign in a statement issued on November 16. “But at the moment our priority is to strengthen our borders and make them impregnable,” he said. Poghosian, 56, is a retired police general who was appointed as Syunik governor in October 2018 six months after the “Velvet Revolution” that brought Nikol Pashinian to power. He served as first deputy chief of the Armenian police until the Pashinian-led mass protests that toppled the country’s former government. Armenian President Appeals To Putin • Naira Bulghadarian Belarus - Presidents Armen Sarkissian (L) of Armenia and Vladimir Putin of Russia attend the opening ceremony of the European Games in Minsk, June 20, 2019. President Armen Sarkissian asked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Monday to help free Armenian soldiers and civilians remaining in Azerbaijani captivity after the recent war in Nagorno-Karabakh. A ceasefire agreement brokered by Putin on November 9 calls for the exchange of all Armenian and Azerbaijani prisoners of war (POWs) and civilian captives. The process has still not begun and it remains unclear clear when the warring sides will start implementing this provision. Armenia’s human rights ombudsman, Arman Tatoyan, accused Baku last week of “artificially dragging out” the release of POWs as well as the search for the bodies of Armenian soldiers killed in action. The Armenian presidential press office said Sarkissian has sent a letter to Putin saying that many in Armenia are very concerned about the fate of the POWs and civilian captives and that Putin can help to speed up their release. Sarkissian sent the letter during what his office described as a private visit to Moscow. The largely ceremonial head of state met over the weekend with leaders of the Armenian community in Russia to discuss the aftermath of the war. The Armenian military has not yet publicized the number of its soldiers who were taken prisoner during the war. The number of Azerbaijani POWs also remains unknown. Yerevan-based human rights lawyers have identified about 50 Armenian POWs and detainees in lawsuits asking the European Court of Human Rights to order Baku to provide information about their health and prison conditions. Hundreds of other Armenian and Karabakh soldiers remain unaccounted for. Relatives of some of these servicemen met in Stepanakert on Monday with Ara Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, and General Rustam Muradov, the commander of Russian peacekeeping forces deployed to Karabakh in line with the truce accord. “Every effort is now made at the highest state level to establish the whereabouts of all our missing compatriots as soon as possible,” Harutiunian said at the meeting. In his words, more than 600 corpses have already been recovered from former Karabakh battlefields. Former Armenian Presidents Hit Back At Pashinian Armenia -- Former Presidents Levon Ter-Petrosian (L) and Robert Kocharian. Former Presidents Levon Ter-Petrosian and Robert Kocharian accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Monday of blatantly lying about their offers to negotiate with Russia and try to stop the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Pashinian hit out at them in a series of Facebook posts that defended his handling of the war which resulted in sweeping territorial gains made by Azerbaijan. Amid continuing opposition calls for his resignation, the embattled premier claimed on Sunday that Ter-Petrosian, Kocharian and another former president, Serzh Sarkisian, objected on October 19 to key terms of a ceasefire agreement which Moscow thought would stop the hostilities. In another statement posted on Monday morning, he questioned the sincerity and seriousness of Kocharian’s and Ter-Petrosian’s stated readiness to fly to Moscow, as Armenia’s “special envoys,” for urgent talks with Russian leaders. Pashinian said they wanted him to arrange a meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin or Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. He said he suggested that they talk instead to former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and try to organize unofficial “courtesy meetings” with Putin, Lavrov or other senior Russian officials. Pashinian added that the two ex-presidents did not travel to Moscow even after he helped Kocharian secure a court order allowing the latter to leave Armenia. Kocharian has been standing trial on coup charges rejected by him as politically motivated. Armenia -- Former President Robert Kocharian greets supporters during his trial, Yerevan, February 25, 2020. Victor Soghomonian, the head of Kocharian’s office, swiftly denied Pashinian’s claims. “Lies and distortions are inseparable from Nikol,” he said. Ter-Petrosian issued an even more scathing denial through his spokesman, Arman Musinian. “President Ter-Petrosian finds it meaningless to comment on the nation-destroying scourge’s mental torments,” Musinian wrote on his Facebook page. “Let him blurt out whatever he wants. There is no way he can make excuses.” “The Armenian people will never forgive him,” Musinian added, alluding to the outcome of the six-week war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire on November 10. The ceasefire agreement locked in the Azerbaijani territorial gains and led to Armenian withdrawal from three more districts around Karabakh. Levon Zurabian, Ter-Petrosian’s right-hand man, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on November 20 that Pashinian did not give the ex-president a “mandate” to negotiate in Moscow a better peace deal in October. Armenia - Opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosian at his election campaign headquarters in Yerevan, 2Apr2017. Echoing statements by other opposition leaders, Zurabian also blamed Pashinian for the military defeat. “This primarily resulted from the fact that Nikol Pashinian has an insatiable and morbid vanity and is absolutely ignorant about international relations, geopolitics and military affairs,” he charged. Ter-Petrosian and Kocharian reportedly met October 20 for the first time in over two decades. They were joined by Sarkisian and two former Karabakh presidents. The meeting was noteworthy given the long history of mutual antagonism between Ter-Petrosian on one side and Kocharian and Sarkisian on the other. Ter-Petrosian, who had served as Armenia’s first president from 1991-1998, ran in a disputed 2008 presidential election in an unsuccessful bid to prevent the handover of power from Kocharian to Sarkisian. Pashinian played a major role in Ter-Petrosian’s 2008 opposition movement and spent nearly two years in prison as a result. He subsequently fell out with the ex-president and set up his own party. Pashinian Confirms Rejecting Earlier Karabakh Truce Agreement NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- Bursts of explosions are seen during fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijan's forces near Shushi (Susa) outside Stepanakert, November 5, 2020 Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has confirmed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assertion that he could have stopped the war in Nagorno-Karabakh three weeks before the Armenian-Armenian ceasefire brokered by Moscow on November 9. In November 17 televised remarks, Putin said that the Armenian side would have suffered fewer territorial losses and, in particular, retained control of the strategic Karabakh town of Shushi (Shusha) had Pashinian agreed to Azerbaijan’s terms of a ceasefire on October 20. Shushi was captured by Azerbaijani forces two or three days before the subsequent truce agreement halted the war on November 10. Azerbaijan agreed to stop its military operations in return for an Armenian pledge to withdraw from three districts around Karabakh. Baku regained control over four other districts, which had been occupied by Karabakh Armenian forces in the early 1990s, during the latest war. Its troops also captured Karabakh’s southern Hadrut district. Speaking to the Rossiya-24 TV channel, Putin said: “On October 19–20, I had a series of telephone conversations with [Azerbaijani] President Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinian. At that time, the armed forces of Azerbaijan regained control over an insignificant part of Nagorno-Karabakh, namely, its southern section. “On the whole, I managed to convince President Aliyev that it was possible to end hostilities, but the return of [Azerbaijani] refugees, including to Shusha, was a mandatory condition on his part. Unexpectedly for me, the position of our Armenian partners was that they perceived this as something unacceptable.” “At that point, the prime minister told me that his country could not agree to this, and that it will keep fighting,” added Putin. NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- Azerbaijani soldiers patrol at a checkpoint on a road outside the town of Shushi (Susa), November 26, 2020. Pashinian essentially confirmed this on Sunday evening. In a lengthy Facebook post, he insisted that Yerevan’s acceptance of the earlier deal negotiated by Putin and the resulting return of refugees to Shushi would have also restored Azerbaijani control of the town overlooking the Karabakh capital Stepanakert. “The problem was that in that case more than 90 percent of Shushi’s population would be Azerbaijanis who would control the road to Stepanakert … Thus the agreement did not materialize,” he wrote. Pashinian claimed that Putin found his arguments “logical.” Putin’s November 17 comments suggest the opposite. “Prime Minister Pashinian told me openly that he viewed [the return of Azerbaijanis to Shushi] as a threat to the interests of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh,” the Russian president told Rossiya-24. “I do not quite understand the essence of this hypothetical threat. I mean, it was about the return of civilians to their homes, while the Armenian side was to have retained control over this section of Nagorno-Karabakh, including Shusha.” Pashinian sought to justify his rejection of the October 20 ceasefire terms as he continued to defend his handling of the six-week war strongly condemned by the Armenian opposition and a growing number of other domestic critics. They hold him responsible for Azerbaijan’s military victory and demand the Armenian government’s resignation and the conduct of snap parliamentary elections. The critics have seized upon Putin’s revelation and portrayed it as further proof of Pashinian’s incompetence and disastrous decision-making. They say that the prime minister would have not only kept more territory under Armenian control but also saved the lives of hundreds and possibly thousands of Armenian soldiers had he agreed to the proposed ceasefire on October 20. 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.