Friday, Armenian Banks Block Russian Cards After New U.S. Sanctions • Sargis Harutyunyan Russia - The logo of MIR payment system is on display at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in Saint Petersburg, June 2, 2021. Some of Armenia’s commercial banks have stopped processing payments via Russia’s Mir cards following additional U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia earlier this month. The Mir cards issued by the Russian central bank’s National Card Payment System (NSPK) became an alternative for Russian travellers in March after Visa and MasterCard shut off their Russian networks over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions against NSPK Chief Executive Vladimir Komlev on September 15. The Financial Times daily reported that Washington is pressuring Turkey as well as the countries of the South Caucasus, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf to block the Russian payment system on their territory. Two Turkish banks suspended use of Mir a few days later. Uzbekistan’s national UZCARD system followed suit on Friday. It emerged that at least several of the two dozen banks operating in Armenia have also halted use of the Russian cards. None of them agreed to comment on their decision. The development will first and foremost affect Russian tourists visiting Armenia as well as many of the thousands of Russians who have relocated to the country since the start of the war in Ukraine on February 24. Armenia - Russian national Artur Asafyev tries to retrieve cash from an ATM machine in Yerevan, One of those migrants, journalist Artur Astafyev, on Friday tried unsuccessfully to retrieve cash from ATM machines operated by two local banks. “I was previously able to take cash from any [Armenian] bank, converting rubles to drams,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. Astafyev was still able to use his Mir card for buying things from one Yerevan store. Its POS terminal is connected to one of at least two other Armenian banks that said they are continuing to accept Mir. One of those banks, VTB Armenia, is a subsidiary of Russia’s second largest bank, VTB. The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) insisted, meanwhile, that it has not issued any orders or guidance to local banks regarding Mir. “Armenia’s commercial banks manage their risks, including those related to sanctions, on their own,” the CBA said in a statement to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. Central Bank data shows that Mir accounted for 17.4 percent of $4.3 billion worth of card transitions processed in Armenia in the first half of this year. Russian-Armenian trade soared by 42 percent, to $1.6 billion, during the same period despite the Western economic sanctions against Moscow. Russia thus reinforced its status as Armenia’s leading trading partner. Pashinian Ally Appointed As Yerevan Vice-Mayor • Narine Ghalechian Armenia - Former Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinian attends a session of Yerevan's municipal assembly, . Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party on Friday took another step towards installing one of its senior members, Tigran Avinian, as the next mayor of Yerevan. The municipal assembly controlled by the party appointed Avinian as one of the city’s five deputy mayors. Avinian, 33, actively participated in the 2018 mass protests that brought Pashinian to power. He was named Armenia’s deputy prime minister shortly after the “velvet revolution.” Avinian resigned in August 2021, saying that he objected to the ruling party’s list of candidates for snap parliamentary elections held in June. Nevertheless, he remained a member of Pashinian’s political team. Early this year, Civil Contract announced that Avinian will be its mayoral candidate in the next municipal elections due in 2023. The announcement came shortly after former Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutian was ousted by the city council after falling out with Pashinian. The council voted to elect Avinian as vice-mayor on Friday. Analysts believe that the move is aimed at boosting his and Civil Contract’s chances in the next municipal polls. In his new capacity, Avinian will, among other things, oversee the administrations of Yerevan’s districts and liaise with the central government. Speaking to journalists, he insisted that he will concentrate on “the vice-mayor’s duties,” rather than the mayoral race. “I will be working to achieve results,” he said. “I don’t want to think about other things at this stage.” Armenia - A screenshot of a video ad of former Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutian's upcoming monodrama. None of Armenia’s major opposition groups have fielded mayoral candidates so far. Marutian, who was a TV comedian before becoming Yerevan mayor in October 2018, has also not said whether he will participate in the polls. Earlier this month, the popular ex-mayor stoked speculation about his plans to regain his post when he scheduled a satirical monodrama which he was due to play in the country’s leading theater. Tickets for the first performances of the play titled “The Mayor” were sold out within hours. A few days later, the Armenian police reportedly recommended that Marutian be prosecuted for illegally allocating land to a Yerevan restaurant in 2019. Critics said the authorities are thus trying to prevent Marutian from joining the mayoral race. Armenia Again Warns Of ‘New Azeri Aggression’ Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian addresses a session of the UN General Assembly, New York, . Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian accused Azerbaijan late on Thursday of planning to occupy more Armenian territory while reaffirming his readiness to sign a comprehensive Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal. Addressing the UN General Assembly in New York, Pashinian insisted that last week’s large-scale border clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces amounted to military aggression against Armenia. “In the wake of this attack, the official narrative and other sources of information suggest that Azerbaijan intends to occupy more territories of Armenia, which must be prevented,” he said in a speech. “I want to stress that the risk of new aggression by Azerbaijan remains very high, especially given that every day Azerbaijan violates the ceasefire and the number of causalities and those injured could change any moment.” Baku blames Yerevan for the worst escalation of the conflict since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Earlier this week, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev accused the Armenian side of dragging its feet over the signing of a peace treaty sought by him and the demarcation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. He said the treaty should call for mutual recognition of each other’s territory integrity. Pashinian asserted that Azerbaijan is seeking the kind of accord that would not prevent it from claiming or trying to occupy more Armenian territory. Armenia -A house in the border village of Sotk destroyed by Azerbaijani shelling, . “Could you show a map of Armenia that you recognize or are ready to recognize as the Republic of Armenia?” he asked, appealing to Aliyev. He cited Aliyev’s repeated claims that much of modern-day Armenia is “historical Azerbaijani lands.” “If Azerbaijan recognizes territorial integrity of Armenia, not theoretically but concretely -- I mean the integrity of our internationally recognized territory of 29.800 square kilometers -- it will mean that we can sign a peace treaty mutually recognizing each other’s territorial integrity,” Pashinian went on. “Otherwise, we would have a phantom peace treaty and after that Azerbaijan will use the border delimitation process for new territorial claims and occupation.” Pashinian made similar comments in the Armenian parliament on September 14 nearly two days after the outbreak of the latest border clashes. He said nothing about the status of Nagorno-Karabakh or the security of its ethnic Armenian population. His statement fueled rumors that the Armenian government will unconditionally accept Baku’s terms of the treaty, including recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh. Thousands of angry people rallied outside the parliament building in Yerevan in the following hours to demand Pashinian’s removal from power. The prime minister assured them that his comments were misunderstood and that “no document is about to be signed.” UN - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets with Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi in New York, . In his UN speech, Pashinian made no explicit mention of the Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination that had long been championed by Armenia. Also, Pashinian appeared to hit out at Russia and the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) over what Yerevan sees as their lack of support for Armenia. In particular, he said, “some of our international partners are silent” about the Azerbaijani “aggression.” By contrast, the Armenian leader praised U.S. and Iranian reactions to the hostilities when he held earlier on Thursday separate talks with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the annual session of the UN General Assembly. Raisi was cited by his office as reiterating that Iran strongly opposes any attempts to strip it of its “strategic” and “historical” border with Armenia. He clearly alluded to Azerbaijani demands for an exterritorial corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave. Pashinian repeated in his speech that Yerevan is only ready to open conventional transport links for Nakhichevan that would be under the “sovereign control of Armenia.” Former Armenian Presidents Hold Crisis Talks Armenia - Former Presidents Serzh Sarkissian, Robert Kocharian and Levon Ter-Petrosian. Former Presidents Levon Ter-Petrosian, Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian met late on Thursday to discuss grave security challenges facing Armenia. The meeting was hosted by Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, at his headquarters in Echmiadzin. Two former presidents of Nagorno-Karabakh, Bako Sahakian and Arkadi Ghukasian, also attended it. In a statement, the church’s Mother See said that the participants of the meeting discussed “the situation in Armenia.” “It was decided to continue meetings,” the statement said without giving details. None of the ex-presidents or their offices made public statements immediately after their rare trilateral encounter. Ishkhan Saghatelian, an opposition leader, called for such crisis talks on September 13 the day after Azerbaijani forces reportedly attacked various sections of Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan. He said Ter-Petrosian, Kocharian and Sarkisian as well as Garegin and other “influential figures” should jointly explore ways of “getting the country out of this situation.” Saghatelian is a leading member of the main opposition Hayastan alliance headed by Kocharian. Ter-Petrosian held a separate meeting with Garegin on September 18. He received Arayik Harutiunian, the current Karabakh president, in his Yerevan residence two days later. Ter-Petrosian, Kocharian and Sarkisian, who have long had uneasy relations with each other, previously met in October 2020 during the Armenian-Azerbaijani war in Karabakh. They discussed jointly seeking greater international -- and in particular Russian -- support for Armenia. The initiative did not translate into concrete action because of what they described as a lack of cooperation by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. Also, in the run-up to the June 2021 parliamentary elections, Ter-Petrosian proposed that the three ex-presidents set up an electoral alliance to oust Pashinian and then immediately retire from politics. Kocharian reportedly rejected the idea. Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2022 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.