RFE/RL Armenian Report – 04/06/2022

                                Wednesday, April 6, 2022


Armenia, Azerbaijan Make Progress Towards Peace Deal
April 07, 2022

Belgium - European Council President Charles Michel, Armenian Prime Minister 
Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev begin a trilateral 
meeting in Brussels, April 6, 2022.


The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed to start drafting a bilateral 
“peace treaty” and set up a joint commission on demarcating the 
Armenian-Azerbaijani border during fresh talks in Brussels hosted by European 
Council President Charles Michel.

“We have decided all together to launch a concrete process, to prepare a 
possible peace treaty and to address all necessary elements for such a treaty,” 
Michel told reporters on Wednesday night after his trilateral meeting with 
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev 
that lasted for more than four hours.

“I am confident that tonight we took an important step in the right direction,” 
he said. “It doesn’t mean everything is solved. But it means that we made 
progress.”

In a written statement issued shortly afterwards, Michel said Aliyev and 
Pashinian pledged to “move rapidly” towards the comprehensive treaty meant to 
resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. They will instruct their foreign 
ministers to “work on the preparation” of such a deal, added the head of the 
European Union’s main decision-making body.

The Armenian government’s press office confirmed these instructions in a 
statement on the late-night talks.

Baku wants the peace deal to be based on five elements, including a mutual 
recognition of each other’s territorial integrity. Pashinian has publicly stated 
that they are acceptable to Yerevan in principle, fuelling Armenian opposition 
claims that he is ready to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh.

Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said last week that Yerevan will also raise the 
issue of Karabakh’s status with the Azerbaijani side. The Armenian government 
statement on the Brussels talks made no mention of the issue.

Michel said after the talks that the two sides now have a better understanding 
of possible parameters of the deal. But he did not elaborate.

The top EU official also announced that Aliyev and Pashinian agreed to “convene 
a Joint Border Commission by the end of April.” “The mandate of the Joint Border 
Commission will be to delimit the bilateral border between Armenia and 
Azerbaijan and ensure a stable security situation along and in the vicinity of 
the borderline,” he said.

The Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders already agreed to set up such a commission 
during their November 2021 talks in Sochi hosted by Russian President Vladimir 
Putin. It was expected that Russian officials will actively participate in the 
commission’s work.

It was not immediately clear whether Yerevan and Baku decided to exclude any 
Russian involvement in the border demarcation.



Armenian Death Toll In Ukraine Revealed
April 06, 2022
        • Marine Khachatrian

UKRAINE - An armoured vehicle of pro-Russian troops drives along a street past a 
residential building destroyed during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the besieged 
southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine March 31, 2022.


At least 23 ethnic Armenian citizens or residents of Ukraine have been killed 
since the start of the Russian invasion, according to leaders of the country’s 
Armenian community.

Davit Mkrtchian, the deputy chairman of the Union of Armenians of Ukraine, said 
on Wednesday that 18 of them were civilians while the five others served in the 
Ukrainian military.

“We pray that the real number [of Armenian deaths] is not higher,” Mkrtchian 
told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Once in every two or three days we hear about 
people getting killed here and there.”

Estimates of the number of ethnic Armenians who lived in Ukraine before the war 
vary from 100,000 to 400,000. Many of them are said to hold Armenian passports. 
The European Union has allowed them to enter Ukraine’s EU neighbors without 
Schengen visas.

Like millions of Ukrainians, many local Armenians have fled the country since 
the start of the conflict on February 24. But even their approximate number 
remains unknown to both the community leaders and Armenia’s government.

The Foreign Ministry in Yerevan said last month that it has not organized 
charter flights for such refugees because few of them are willing to relocate to 
Armenia.

Mkrtchian disputed that claim, saying that many Armenians expressed a desire to 
take refuge in Armenia at the start of the devastating war.

UKRAINE - Fire and smoke light up the night sky east of Kharkiv, March 30, 2022.

According to the Kyiv-based activist, a large number of Armenians remain trapped 
in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, the epicenter of fierce fighting, and, in 
particular, the regional city of Mariupol besieged and partly occupied by 
Russian troops.

Karen Ghulian, an Armenian-born man, lived in Mariupol for over two decades. 
Ghulian said that he, his family and a group of other local Armenians risked 
their lives to flee the war-torn city late last week.

“I realized that if we don’t get out I could lose my family,” he told RFE/RL’s 
Armenian Service. “We got caught in crossfire.”

Ghulian said he and his family members moved to a friend’s apartment weeks ago 
after their house was destroyed by shelling.

“Conditions there were terrible,” he said. “There was a lack of food, water, 
everything. There were no working shops. They all were empty, looted or bombed.”



Blinken Urges ‘De-Escalation’ In Karabakh
April 06, 2022

U.S. - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks after viewing the "Burma's 
Path To Genocide" exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 
Washington, March 21, 2022.


U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for a de-escalation of tensions in 
Nagorno-Karabakh in separate phone calls with the leaders of Armenia and 
Azerbaijan on Tuesday.

Blinken spoke with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani 
President Ilham Aliyev the day before their talks in Brussels hosted by European 
Council President Charles Michel.

“The Secretary underscored that now was not the time for further escalation in 
the region,” the U.S. State Department spokesman, Ned Price, said in written 
comments on the call with Pashinian.

“The Secretary expressed his encouragement for further peace negotiations 
between Armenia and Azerbaijan, including Pashinian’s and Aliyev’s planned 
meeting April 6 with European Council President Michel,” he said.

“The Secretary called for restraint, de-escalation, and renewed diplomacy,” 
Price said in a separate statement on his conversation with Aliyev.

The trilateral meeting in Brussels was scheduled a week after Azerbaijani troops 
seized a village in eastern Karabakh and tried to push deeper into the 
territory, sparking deadly fighting with Karabakh Armenian forces.

The U.S. State Department deplored the Azerbaijani troop movements, calling them 
“irresponsible and unnecessarily provocative.” Baku rejected the criticism.

Aliyev and Pashinian decided last week to meet in Brussels as Azerbaijan pressed 
Armenia to accept its proposals on a “peace treaty” between the two nations. 
Aliyev was reported to discuss those proposals with Blinken.

According to Price, Blinken told both leaders that the United States is ready to 
help Yerevan and Baku reach a “long-term comprehensive” peace accord by 
“engaging bilaterally and with like-minded partners, including through our role 
as an OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair.”

It was not clear whether Washington will continue to work with Russia, another 
co-chair of the Minsk Group, in seeking an end to the Karabakh conflict.

Price cited Blinken as condemning Moscow’s “heinous war crimes in Ukraine” and 
reaffirming Washington’s commitment to “hold the Russian Federation and its 
enablers accountable for the unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine.”



Armenia’s Food Inflation Remains In Double Digits
April 06, 2022
        • Sargis Harutyunyan

Armenia - Shoppers at a food supermarket in Yerevan.


Food prices in Armenia rose by an average of 12.1 percent in the first quarter 
of this year despite the authorities’ pledges to curb inflation.

Data released by the Armenian government’s Statistical Committee shows that they 
were up by nearly 13 percent year on year in March, translating into an overall 
inflation rate of 7.4 percent.

Annual inflation reached 7.7 percent in December, well above a 4 percent target 
set by the government and the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) for 2021. A sharp 
rise in food prices, which reflects a global trend, was the key factor behind 
the increased cost of living in the country.

In an effort to curb rising inflation, the CBA has raised its benchmark interest 
rate for nine times since December 2020.

The bank most recently hiked the rate in mid-March, citing fallout from Western 
economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

The government likewise predicted that the escalating conflict further push up 
the cost of food staples in Armenia. The South Caucasus country imports a large 
part of its wheat, cooking oil and other basic foodstuffs from Russia.

Also contributing to higher-than-projected inflation are recent increases in the 
prices of electricity and natural gas approved by utility regulators.


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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Emil Lazarian

“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS