Tuesday, 


Pashinian Ally Slams Karabakh Leader

        • Ruzanna Stepanian

Nagorno-Karabakh - Ruben Vardanyan meets with residents of Stepanakert, January 
24, 2023.


Echoing Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s demands, a senior Armenian 
pro-government lawmaker said on Tuesday that Ruben Vardanyan, the 
Nagorno-Karabakh premier, was “sent” to Stepanakert by Russia and must resign.

Gagik Melkonian claimed that Vardanyan’s exit will be announced by Thursday. He 
said it will help to end Azerbaijan’s two-month blockade of the Lachin corridor 
and a rift within Karabakh’s leadership.

“Ask him, ‘Who sent you to Karabakh and why? Why did you cause a split within 
the Karabakh authorities?’ Of course, the Russians sent him. Who else could send 
him?” said the lawmaker representing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil 
Contract party.

He said that Vardanyan must go even if that means the Armenian side has bowed to 
pressure from Azerbaijan.

Aliyev again demanded Vardanyan’s ouster when he spoke during the Munich 
Security Conference at the weekend. He branded the Armenian-born businessman a 
“criminal oligarch” who was “smuggled” to Karabakh from Russia.

Vardanyan was appointed as state minister, the second-highest post in Karabakh’s 
leadership, in November two months after renouncing his Russian citizenship. 
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted in December that Moscow “has 
nothing to do” with the appointment condemned by Baku.

Armenia -- Gagik Melkonian speaks to RFE/RL, February 8, 2019.

Like Azerbaijani officials, Melkonian accused Vardanyan of acting on Russia’s 
orders. Those, he claimed, included “driving a wedge between Armenia and 
Karabakh.”

Last month, Pashinian urged the authorities in Stepanakert to tone down their 
rhetoric and negotiate with Baku in order to get the latter to unblock the sole 
road connecting Karabakh to Armenia. Earlier in January, Karabakh’s government 
and main political factions criticized Pashinian’s statements on the conflict 
with Azerbaijan, saying that they undermine the Karabakh Armenians’ right to 
self-determination.

Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, is due to deliver a video address to 
the population on Thursday. A Karabakh opposition activist, Tigran Petrosian, 
told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday that Harutiunian has decided to replace 
Vardanyan by his chief prosecutor, Gurgen Nersisian.

Mediahub.am quoted Nersisian as saying on Tuesday that he has been offered 
Vardanyan’s job but has not yet decided whether to take up the post of state 
minister.

Vardanyan himself did not comment on his political future. He has made defiant 
statements throughout the Azerbaijani blockade, saying that the Karabakh 
Armenians will never agree to live under Azerbaijani rule despite severe 
hardship endured by them.

Metakse Hakobian, an opposition member of the Karabakh legislature, voiced 
support for Vardanyan and warned Harutiunian against sacking him.



Prominent Armenian General Arrested, Freed

        • Artak Khulian

Armenia - Grigori Khachaturov attends an award ceremony in the presidential 
palace in Yerevan, September 20, 2019.


A prominent Armenian general who demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s 
resignation in 2021 was set free on Tuesday one day after being arrested on 
charges strongly denied by him.

Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Court refused to allow the National Security Service 
(NSS) to hold Grigori Khachaturov in detention pending investigation. He walked 
free in the courtroom as a result.

Khachaturov is the former commander of the Armenian army’s Third Corps mostly 
stationed in northern Tavush province bordering Azerbaijan. He received a major 
military award and was promoted to the rank of major-general after leading a 
successful military operation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in July 2020, 
less than three months before the outbreak of the six-week war in 
Nagorno-Karabakh.

Khachaturov was among four dozen high-ranking military officers who accused 
Pashinian’s government of incompetence and misrule and demanded its resignation 
in February 2021. The unprecedented demand was welcomed by the Armenian 
opposition but condemned as a coup attempt by Pashinian.

Khachaturov insisted on the prime minister’s resignation in a separate statement 
issued in March 2021. He said that “every day and hour” of Pashinian’s rule 
“erodes” Armenia’s national security. He was fired a few months later.

The NSS detained Khachaturov late on Monday on charges of money laundering 
stemming from a controversial criminal case opened against Seyran Ohanian, a 
former defense minister who now leads the parliamentary group of the main 
opposition Hayastan alliance.

Ohanian was charged earlier this month with illegally privatizing in the past 
two buildings in Yerevan and two other, disused properties that belonged to the 
Armenian Defense Ministry. He rejects the accusations as politically motivated.

Law-enforcement authorities say that Khachaturov “de facto” acquired one of 
those properties at a knockdown price and used it for obtaining a bank loan 
worth 18 million drams ($45,000). The retired general’s lawyer, Hakob Yenokian, 
described the money laundering charge as “laughable.”

Several opposition figures voiced support for Khachaturov as they gathered 
outside the Yerevan-based court during a hearing on his pre-trial arrest sought 
by the NSS. They claimed that Pashinian is trying to punish the general for his 
and his close relatives’ anti-government views.

Khachaturov’s father Yuri was the chief of the Armenian army’s General Staff 
from 2008-2016. He served as secretary general of the Russian-led Collective 
Security Treaty Organization when the current authorities indicted him as well 
as Ohanian and former President Robert Kocharian in 2018 over their alleged role 
in the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. Armenia’s Constitutional Court 
declared coup charges leveled against them unconstitutional in 2021.

Yuri Khachaturov and his second son actively participated in last year’s 
antigovernment protests staged by the country’s main opposition forces.



Activist Decries ‘Continuing Police Torture’ In Armenia

        • Anush Mkrtchian

Armenia - Busloads of police are seen in the center of Yerevan, December 5, 2019.


The Armenian police continue to ill-treat criminal suspects to extract 
confessions or other testimony from them despite police reforms declared by the 
government, a civic activist claimed on Tuesday.

A government bill enacted as part of those reforms three years ago called for 
surveillance cameras to be installed inside police stations -- and their 
interrogation rooms in particular -- across Armenia by 2023. This was supposed 
to prevent police abuse of detainees which had long been widespread.

Only ten police stations were equipped with such cameras afterwards. They were 
switched off in last July on then national police chief Vahe Ghazarian’s orders.

The police told the country’s Office of the Human Rights Defender that the 
cameras are no longer needed because under another law enacted last year 
suspects detained by the police must now be interrogated by another 
law-enforcement body, the Investigative Committee.

Daniel Ioannisian, a civic activist monitoring the police, dismissed that 
explanation. Ghazarian simply wanted to make sure that his subordinates can 
continue to torture detainees, he claimed, adding that the illegal practice has 
therefore continued unabated.

Ioannisian noted that as recently as on February 10 two lawyers representing a 
juvenile suspect claimed to have been beaten up by officers at a police station 
in Yerevan. The police denied the allegations, saying that the officers 
themselves were insulted and assaulted by the lawyers.

Ghazarian, who is reputedly a childhood friend of Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian, was promoted to head

Armenia’s newly re-established Interior Ministry in January. Ioannisian’s Union 
of Informed Citizens (UIC) and two other non-governmental organizations strongly 
criticized the appointment and pulled out of a government body coordinating 
police reforms in protest. They accused Ghazarian of systematically obstructing 
those reforms.

Ghazarian has not publicly responded to the accusations so far.



Russia Reaffirms Opposition To EU Monitoring Mission In Armenia

Armenia - European Union monitors patrol Armenia's border with Azerbaijan, 
.


Russia has accused the European Union of trying to squeeze it out of the South 
Caucasus, reacting to the deployment of some 100 EU monitors to Armenia’s border 
with Azerbaijan.

The Russian Foreign Ministry insisted that the monitoring mission, officially 
launched on Monday, will not reduce the risk of fresh fighting on the 
Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

“Unfortunately, it is not the first time we have recorded the desire of the 
European Union and the West as a whole to gain a foothold in our ally Armenia by 
any means,” the ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said in written comments.

“We see in these attempts a solely geopolitical background which is far from the 
interests of a real normalization of relations in the Transcaucasus. Everything 
is being done to squeeze Russia out of the region and weaken its historical role 
as the main guarantor of security,” she charged.

Zakharova reiterated the official Russian line that Armenian-Azerbaijani 
agreements brokered by Moscow during and after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh 
will remain “the key factor of stability and security in the region in the 
foreseeable future.”

RUSSIA -- Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova speaks during a 
press conference in Moscow, July 1, 2021

Moscow already condemned the EU member states in late January just days after 
they formally approved the monitoring mission requested by Armenia. Russian 
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also rebuked Yerevan for refusing a similar 
mission offered by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in 
November.

CSTO member Armenia has repeatedly accused the Russian-led military alliance of 
failing to defend it against Azerbaijani “military aggression.”

Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan praised the EU for sending the observers when 
he met with the head of the monitoring mission, Markus Ritter, and another 
senior EU official on Monday. Mirzoyan expressed confidence that the mission 
will make an “important contribution” to regional stability and the security of 
Armenian border areas.

The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, similarly tweeted that the monitors 
“will contribute to human security, build confidence on the ground and support 
EU efforts in the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”

The EU deployment underscores growing friction between Moscow and Yerevan. 
Russian-Armenian relations have soured lately also because of Azerbaijan’s 
continuing blockade of Karabakh’s land link with Armenia.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly accused Russian peacekeepers of 
doing little to unblock the vital road. Moscow has rejected the accusations.


Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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