Wednesday, August 25, 2021 Russian Official Says Armenia Signs Arms Supply Contracts In Moscow August 25, 2021 • Sargis Harutyunyan Armenian Defense Minister Arshak Karapetian at an arms exhibition near Moscow, August 25, 2021 Armenia has signed arms supply contracts with Russian companies as part of the Army-2021 military-industrial exhibition in Moscow, said Dmitry Shugayev, director of the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation. The Russian official gave no details of the deals. “Among the countries that signed agreements are our traditional partners – Kazakhstan, Armenia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, and, of course, India, China, Myanmar,” said Shugayev, as quoted Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency. Earlier, Alexander Mikheyev, director of the Russian arms exporting company, Rosoboronexport, told reporters that more than 20 deals worth more than 2 billion Euros (about $2.4 billion) had already been concluded within the framework of the Army-2021 exhibition. After attending the exhibition in Moscow on August 24 evening and meeting with the heads of Russian military-industrial companies, Armenian Defense Minister Arshak Karapetian made a remarkable statement, saying that Armenia will stop acquiring old types of weapons and start purchasing new, high-quality weapons. Remarkably, two Armenian delegations visited the Moscow arms exhibition. According to the Defense Ministry, first, on August 22, a delegation headed by the minister left for the Russian capital to take part in the opening ceremonies for the Army-2021 exhibition and the International Army Games. The following day, the ministry announced that a delegation headed by Deputy Defense Minister Karen Brutian would also take part in the Army-2021 exhibition, which will be open till August 28, during which he would hold meetings with heads of a number of large Russian companies working in the defense sphere and sign contracts. “We enjoy full support. I can say that I haven’t heard a single “no” word here. And we will take practical steps to develop our cooperation with Russia. We plan to get high-quality weapons, we plan to have new weapons, we refuse to acquire old types of weapons, that is our policy. It is better for us to have fewer, but high-quality weapons to know for sure that these weapons will work,” Minister Karapetian said in Moscow. According to the Defense Ministry, on August 23 in Moscow Karapetian “discussed the whole range of issues of Armenian-Russian military-technical cooperation with director of the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation Dmitry Shugayev and director of the Rosoboronexport Company Alexander Mikheyev.” Talking to media, Karapetian said that Armenia will also seek to have its own weapons production and that it will receive the support in terms of opening joint ventures. “We will do it quickly. As a nation we should be able to produce our own weapons,” the Armenian defense minister said. He said that the third task for him is to exclude intermediaries between the Defense Ministry and the manufacturing companies. “I think that if these three conditions are met, we will definitely get a new modernized army, an army meeting the requirements of the 21st century, and we will be able to cope with the dangers we face,” Karapetian stressed. After last fall’s 44-day war against Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, in which Armenia suffered a defeat, and especially after the June 20 snap parliamentary elections, the government led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly announced plans to modernize the Armenian armed forces and acquire new weapons. According to the government’s 2021-26 action plan unveiled by Pashinian last week, “the Armed Forces Reform Strategy is largely based on the analysis of the lessons learned from the 44-day war and the security environment formed after November 9, 2020 [when the Russian-brokered ceasefire was signed in Nagorno-Karabakh].” “The government will define the main guidelines, long-term planning issues and resources on which the development of the defense system of the Republic of Armenia and the fifth generation warfare toolkit will be based. The government will continue the process of modernization of armaments, military equipment, acquisition of new types of weapons. A more targeted policy will be implemented in the spheres of military and military-technical cooperation with allied and partner countries,” the government’s action plan reads. Still, it remains unclear what particular weapons Armenia will acquire. The contacts of Armenian officials with representatives of major Russian arms industry companies come after an August 11 meeting between Armenian Defense Minister Karapetian and his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu in Moscow. During that meeting Shoygu said that Russia will continue to help Armenia reform and modernize its armed forces. “We can consider that the process of arms supplies to Armenia has started,” the Russian defense minister said as he handed a dagger as a gift to his Armenian counterpart. The announcement apparently angered Azerbaijan, which objects to Russia’s continuing arms supplies to Armenia. In an interview to CNN Turk television on August 14 Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev argued that while the Armenian people and their leadership “have put up with the defeat” in the war, continuing to arm Armenia appears “illogical.” “We expect that Russia will stop arming Armenia, we don’t see it at the moment,” Aliyev said. Responding to Aliyev’s remarks, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that supplying weapons to other countries was Moscow’s sovereign right. At a news briefing in Moscow on August 19 she reminded that Russia, which deployed about 2,000 peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh after the ceasefire, has supplied weapons not only to Armenia, its key military and political ally in the South Caucasus, but also to Azerbaijan. “It is Russia’s sovereign right, and the Russian side always takes into account the need to maintain a balance of military power in the region,” Zakharova said. Political analyst Ruben Mehrabian said that the 44-day war, in particular, showed that the Armenian army needs to be supplied with a new generation of weapons and that a fundamentally new management system should be put in place. “We need a drastic change in our entire military education system, so that the training of personnel directly meets the requirements set to the army and servicemen in the future can master everything that the army will be equipped with,” Mehrabian said. Armenia Reaffirms Support For UNESCO Mission In Nagorno-Karabakh August 25, 2021 • Artak Hambardzumian A man lights a candle inside the war-damaged Armenian Ghazanchetsots (Holy Savior) Cathedral in Shushi on October 8, 2020, a month before Nagorno-Karabakh’s historic city was captured by advancing Azerbaijani forces. Armenia has reaffirmed its support for a fact-finding mission of UNESCO in Nagorno-Karabakh in line with the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two protocols, an Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Wednesday. While receiving newly appointed United Nations Resident Coordinator in Azerbaijan Vladanka Andreeva on August 24, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, in particular, accused Armenia of objecting to a UNESCO fact-finding mission in Nagorno-Karabakh. “We can say that we had been calling them [UNESCO] for 30 years and they wouldn’t come. And after the war they decided to come. Therefore, we agreed to this and, as far as I know, the latest information was that the mission had already been created, but now Armenia is protesting again. That’s why the mission is delayed,” Aliyev said, as quoted by local media. Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vahan Hunanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service (Azatutyun) on Wednesday that the need for the immediate implementation of the UNESCO fact-finding mission arose after last year’s 44-day war in order to protect the Armenian cultural and religious heritage from the imminent danger of destruction in the territories that went under the control of Azerbaijan. “Both during the hostilities and after the establishment of the ceasefire, there have been numerous documented cases of deliberate destruction of and vandalism against Armenian churches, other cultural and religious monuments by the Azerbaijani armed forces. Moreover, in parallel with the physical destruction of religious and cultural heritage sites of Artsakh [the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh], we are witnessing unacceptable cases of falsification of historical facts, distortion of the identity and belonging of Armenian monuments, change of architectural appearance by the order of the top leadership of Azerbaijan,” he said. Hunanian said that in order to cover up cultural crimes, Azerbaijan has been blocking the visit of UNESCO experts for some time, while accusing the organization of bias. Stressing that the practice of creating obstacles for the implementation of the mission by the Azerbaijani authorities and the politicization of the issue continues, the Armenian Foreign Ministry reminded that as early as December 2020, UNESCO’s deputy director-general for cultural affairs stated that Azerbaijan was not giving its consent to the mission. “Artsakh’s endangered cultural and religious heritage urgently needs international attention in order to properly preserve it and prevent cases of vandalism. The implementation of the UNESCO mission and a comprehensive study of the historical and cultural heritage will contribute to the efforts to preserve cultural heritage in the territories under the control of Azerbaijan and prevent possible negative developments,” the ministry spokesman said. Hunanian emphasized that the Armenian side is interested in the implementation of the mission as soon as possible and continues to make targeted efforts in this direction. Pro-Government, Opposition Lawmakers Brawl In Armenian Parliament August 25, 2021 • Astghik Bedevian Pro-government and opposition lawmakers threw water battles at each other during a brawl in the Armenian parliament on August 25, 2021 For the second day in a row security guards have been called into the Armenian parliament chamber as another brawl between pro-government and opposition lawmakers broke out during the presentation of the government’s five-year action plan on Wednesday. Much of the 2021-2026 program that has been laid out in parliament by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian focuses on the new government’s vision of Armenia’s future in new geopolitical realities in the region created after last year’s defeat in the war against Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh. Hayastan and Pativ Unem, the two opposition factions represented in the parliament, have been critical of Pashinian and his political team, holding them responsible for the defeat and describing the government’s program as a pathway to a new “capitulation.” Pashinian and majority lawmakers have dismissed such accusations, claiming that it is Pashinian’s predecessors, namely former presidents Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisians, with whom the two opposition factions are associated, that are largely to blame for the defeat. They argued that by letting them score a landslide victory in the June 20 snap parliament elections people vindicated Pashinian and his political team, while passing a guilty verdict on the former governments. In his speech today Hayk Sargsian, a member of the ruling Civil Contract faction, in particular, criticized the former governments for their mishandling of the economy and army affairs that led to large-scale out-migration and a decrease in the country’s defense capabilities before the 2018 “velvet revolution.” He said that the new Pashinian government did not have enough time to redress the situation. In an apparent reference to opposition criticism that some members of the current government did not serve in the army, Sargsian said that all former defense ministers during whose tenures people were exempted from military service by phone calls were “traitors.” Sargsian’s remarks sparked a quarrel in the chamber between pro-government and opposition lawmakers as the main opposition Hayastan faction is led by former defense minister Seyran Ohanian. As lawmakers began to throw water bottles at each other, Parliament Speaker Alen Simonian interrupted the session and called in security guards to restore order in the chamber. Several lawmakers, including Civil Contract member Hrachya Hakobian, were removed from the chamber. Hakobian later told reporters that the brawl was provoked by Ohanian, who threw a water bottle in the direction of Sargsian. Ohanian did not comment immediately on the accusation. He denied any fistfights inside the session hall where access to media has been restricted since early August. Ohanian said, however, that his glasses were broken in the jostle. Another brawl in the parliament between pro-government and opposition members broke out shortly after the lawmakers resumed work. It began during the speech of opposition Hayastan faction member Vahe Hakobian. It is seen on the video that parliament majority and minority deputies exchanged blows during a mass brawl that followed. Another break in the session was announced and security guards were called in. Several lawmakers were escorted out of the session hall. The Prosecutor’s Office later said that the brawls in the Armenian parliament on Wednesday will become a matter for investigation. On August 24, opposition lawmakers brawled with security guards after Parliament Speaker Simonian ordered that Pativ Unem faction member Anna Mkrtchian be deprived of the floor and removed from the chamber for insulting Prime Minister Pashinian. The opposition yesterday accused Pashinian of provoking the incident with his encouragement of the security guards’ actions. Pashinian dismissed the accusation, saying that the security guards were doing their duty. See videos at Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.rferl.org__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!5iyKLJvykoq8OrWXazVafb_z3_hVdgdolVRj0gr3yvxkcAOB6ER2BggDIMbzzQ$