Wednesday,
Armenian Opposition Blasts Government Over Border Security
• Anush Mkrtchian
• Susan Badalian
Armenia - Armenian soldiers take up positions on the border with Azerbaijan,
December 20, 2020.
The Armenian government has not done enough to fortify the country’s long border
with Azerbaijan, opposition lawmakers claimed on Wednesday after three Armenian
soldiers were killed in fresh skirmishes with Azerbaijani troops.
The fighting, which also left at least one Azerbaijani soldier dead, broke out
on Tuesday in Armenia’s Gegharkunik province bordering the Kelbajar district
west of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian forces controlled Kelbajar until withdrawing
from the mountainous district in December 2020 under the terms of a
Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped a six-week war over Karabakh.
“Up until the signing of that capitulation agreement, until our troops withdrew
from Karvachar (Kelbajar) without a single gunshot we had very serious
fortifications that made our armed forces much better protected,” said Gegham
Manukian of the main opposition Hayastan alliance. “Unfortunately, incomplete
border fortifications make Armenian soldiers defending the border a target [of
Azerbaijani attacks.]”
“Videos or other information that occasionally emerge [from Armenian border
posts] do not testify to a satisfactory state of affairs and systematic
[fortification] efforts there … Those efforts have not been adequate, and we now
witness their consequences,” Manukian told reporters.
This is why, he said, the Azerbaijani army managed to advance a few kilometers
into Armenian territory in Gegharkunik and another province, Syunik, in May.
Armenia - An Armenian soldier stands guard on the border with Azerbaijan,
November 12, 2021.
Armen Khachatrian, a senior lawmaker representing the ruling Civil Contract
party, dismissed the opposition criticism. He said that the government has
always promptly financed and facilitated the construction of border
fortifications initiated by the Armenian military.
Khachatrian insisted that the military has increasingly fortified its new
defensive lines in Gegharkunik and Syunik over the past year. He said that
Tuesday’s fighting broke out when Azerbaijani forces opened fire to try to stop
such work carried out outside Verin Shorzha, a border village in Gegharkunik.
Khachatrian and other pro-government parliamentarians regularly visit Armenian
army positions at this and other sections of the volatile frontier. By contrast,
their opposition colleagues have been repeatedly denied permission to inspect
border posts and their defensive facilities.
Manukian said that he and other deputies from Hayastan, which has the second
largest group in the National Assembly, have again asked the Defense Ministry to
allow them to visit the border later this month. The ministry has not yet
replied to the request, he said.
The military has also seriously restricted independent and pro-opposition
media’s access to border areas.
Armenian Food Prices Up 13 Percent In 2021
• Robert Zargarian
Armenia - A supermarket in Yerevan, April 29, 2021.
Food prices in Armenia soared by an average of almost 13 percent in the past
year, according to official statistics.
Data released by the Armenian government’s Statistical Committee shows
particularly drastic increases in the prices of not only imported staple
foodstuffs such as cooking oil and sugar but also vegetables mostly grown in the
country.
The average cost of vegetables was up by as much as 40 percent year on year in
December. This resulted in large measure from last June’s unusually hot and dry
weather that hit domestic agriculture hard.
The Statistical Committee also reported more than 10 percent increases in the
prices of bread, cereals and dairy products.
The rising food prices, which reflect a global trend, pushed up overall
inflation to 7.7 percent in December, well above a 4 percent target set by the
government and the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) for 2021.
The CBA raised its key interest rate for six times in the course of 2021 in a
bid to curb the higher-than-projected inflation which picked at 9.6 percent in
November.
Although the increased cost of food products hit low-income households
particularly hard, the government remains in no rush to raise the country’s
minimum wage that currently stands at 68,000 drams ($142).
Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Ruben Sargsian said in November that
the government is planning to gradually bring the minimum wage to 86,000 drams
by 2026. It will “take the first steps” in that direction in 2023, he said.
Opposition groups are demanding a quick and sharp wage increase. A bill
circulated by the main opposition Hayastan alliance on Tuesday would raise the
minimum wage to 100,000 drams starting from July.
According to the Statistical Committee, the median monthly wage in Armenia
reached 202,000 drams ($420) in November, up by 10 percent year on year.
Pashinian Discusses Karabakh, Kazakhstan With Putin
Russia - Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian in Sochi, November 26, 2021.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by
phone on Wednesday the day after fresh deadly fighting on the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
The Kremlin said the two men discussed “the current situation around
Nagorno-Karabakh” and the implementation of Russian-brokered agreements reached
by Armenia and Azerbaijan. They also spoke about the ongoing peacekeeping
operation conducted in Kazakhstan by the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty
Organization, it said.
The Armenian government’s press office released a virtually identical statement
on the phone call.
The statements made no explicit mention of Tuesday’s heavy fighting that left
one Azerbaijani and three Armenian soldiers dead.
It broke out at a border section separating Armenia’s Gegharkunik province from
the Kelbajar district west of Karabakh. Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each
other of provoking the clash that reportedly involved artillery and attack
drones.
Azerbaijani Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov and his Turkish counterpart Hulusi
Akar discussed the incidents in a phone call. “As always, the Turkish armed
forces stand with Azerbaijan,” Akar was reported to say during the conversation.
The Azerbaijani military said on Wednesday that its positions in Kelbajar came
under renewed Armenian fire overnight.
The Armenian Defense Ministry reported no overnight skirmishes in the area. The
mayor of an Armenian border village, Verin Shorzha, told RFE/RL’s Armenian
Service that he heard no gunfire after Tuesday’s fighting.
Putin held a trilateral meeting with Pashinian and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham
Aliyev in Sochi on November 26. Pashinian and Aliyev pledged to ease tensions on
the Armenian-Azerbaijan border by launching a Russian-mediated process of its
demarcation.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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