Friday, April 7, 2023
Confusion Over Armenia’s Participation In U.S.-Led Military Drills
POLAND - U.S., Polish and French soldiers stand near their armoured vehicles
during Defender Europe 2022 military exercise of NATO troops at the military
range in Bemowo Piskie, May 24, 2022.
The U.S. Department of Defense removed Armenia on Thursday from the list of
participants of an upcoming U.S.-led military exercise in Europe released by it
on Wednesday.
Armenia was initially listed among 26 countries which the Pentagon said will
take part in the Defender 23 exercise designed to “deter those who would
threaten the peace of Europe and defend the continent from aggression.”
“Approximately 9,000 U.S. troops and about 17,000 troops from 26 allied and
partner nations will participate and portions of the exercise will stretch
across 10 different European countries,” Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman,
told reporters late on Wednesday.
The Armenian Defense Ministry did not confirm its participation in the two-month
drills that will begin on April 22.
A report on Singh’s announcement posted on the Pentagon’s website was edited on
Thursday evening to exclude Armenia from the list. No official explanation was
given for that revision. The Armenian government did not comment on it either.
It was thus not clear whether Yerevan had initially agreed to join the war games
before deciding to pull out of them.
The Armenian military was reportedly close to sending troops to the U.S.-led
drills held in 2021 but opted out of them at the last minute. It said at the
time that Armenian soldiers join only those NATO drills that simulate
international peacekeeping operations and train military personnel for them.
Armenia’s relations with Russia, its traditional ally, and the Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) have deteriorated in recent months due to
what Yerevan sees as a lack of support from its allies in the conflict with
Azerbaijan.
Earlier this year, the Armenian government cancelled a CSTO military exercise
planned in Armenia and refused to appoint a deputy secretary-general of the
Russian-led military alliance It also rejected other CSTO member states’ offer
to deploy a monitoring mission to the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
The unprecedented tensions have called into question Armenia’s continued
membership in the CSTO. A senior Russian diplomat said last week that Moscow
hopes to end the South Caucasus country’s growing estrangement from its CSTO
allies.
Tensions between Russia and NATO have escalated dramatically since the Russian
invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin said recently that the U.S.-led alliance is
increasingly “hostile” to Russia and more and more involved in the war in
Ukraine.
Armenia Confirms Non-Participation In U.S.-Led Drills
• Anush Mkrtchian
POLAND - Polish and American soldiers stand during Defender Europe 2022 military
exercise of NATO troops at the military range in Bemowo Piskie, May 24, 2022.
The Armenian military confirmed on Friday that it will not take part in a
U.S.-led military exercise in Europe that will start later this month.
The U.S. Department of Defense listed Armenia on Wednesday among 26 nations that
will send troops to the Defender 23 exercise designed to “deter those who would
threaten the peace of Europe and defend the continent from aggression.” It
removed the South Caucasus country from the list, posted on the Pentagon’s
website, on Thursday without any explanation.
The Armenian Defense Ministry declined to comment on that. The ministry
spokesman, Aram Torosian, said only that Armenian soldiers will likely
participate instead in two other, more small-scale drills that are due to be
organized by U.S. Army Europe and Africa later this year.
One of those drills will involve multinational troops making up KFOR, the
NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, Torosian said in written comments. A
small Armenian military contingent has been part of KFOR for nearly two decades.
It thus remained unclear whether Yerevan had initially agreed to join the
Defender 23 war games before deciding to pull out of them.
Hakob Badalian, an Armenian political analyst, suggested that Armenia’s initial
inclusion on the list of participants was hardly the result of a U.S.
“technical” error.
“I don’t think it’s a technical issue,” Badalian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“The question of why that happened is very important.”
Armenia has long been allied to Russia, which claims to have faced growing
“hostility” from NATO and the United States in particular since the Russian
invasion of Ukraine.
Armenia’s relations with Russia and the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO) have deteriorated in recent months due to what Yerevan sees as a lack of
support from its allies in the conflict with Azerbaijan.
Earlier this year, the Armenian government cancelled a CSTO military exercise
planned in Armenia and refused to appoint a deputy secretary-general of the
Russian-led military alliance. It also rejected other CSTO member states’ offer
to deploy a monitoring mission to the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Russia Reaffirms Support For Turkish-Armenian Normalization
• Aza Babayan
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks during a news conference in
Ankara, April 7, 2023.
Russia supports Turkey’s and Armenia’s efforts to normalize bilateral relations,
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated during a visit to Ankara on
Friday.
“We welcome the process of normalizing relations between Armenia and Turkey
which began with our support,” Lavrov said after talks with his Turkish
counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu. “We welcome efforts to unblock transport links and
communication routes.”
Russia, which has thousands of troops deployed along Armenia’s border with
Turkey, hosted in January 2022 the first meeting of Turkish and Armenian envoys
held as part of that process. They held three more rounds of negotiations in the
following months.
The two neighboring states agreed last July to allow mutual air freight traffic
and to open the Turkish-Armenian border to citizens of third countries.
Turkey has for decades made the full opening of the border and the establishment
of diplomatic relations with Armenia conditional on an Armenian-Azerbaijani
peace deal acceptable to Azerbaijan. Turkish leaders have reaffirmed this
precondition since the start of the normalization talks with Yerevan.
Speaking at a joint news conference, Cavusoglu said Turkish-Armenian relations
and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict were on the agenda of his talks with Lavrov.
He said Armenia should sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan as soon as possible.
Lavrov stuck to the official Russian line that agreements brokered by Moscow
should serve as a blueprint for the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani
relations.
“We hope that our non-regional partners will not interfere in this process and
instead will prod the parties to strictly implement the trilateral
[Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani] agreements,” he said in a clear reference to the
West.
Over the past year, Moscow has repeatedly accused the United States and the
European Union of trying to hijack those agreements and squeeze Russia out of
the South Caucasus. The Western powers have denied that.
Armenian Official Wants Probe Of Azeri Advance
• Ruzanna Stepanian
• Tigran Hovsepian
Armenia - Andranik Kocharian, chairman of the Armenian parliament committee on
defense and security, is interviewed by RFE/RL, January 11, 2022.
A senior Armenian lawmaker on Friday called for an official inquiry into fresh
territorial gains made by Azerbaijan last week along the border with Armenia.
Azerbaijani army units advanced on March 30 into what Yerevan regards as
sovereign Armenian territory adjacent to the Lachin corridor connecting Armenia
to Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the National Security Service (NSS), they
crossed a section of the border just outside the Armenian village of Tegh. The
community lost a large part of its agricultural land and pastures.
The NSS claimed on April 1 that the situation in that border area “improved
significantly” after negotiations held by Armenian and Azerbaijani officials.
Tegh residents countered, however, that the Azerbaijani troops did not retreat
from any of their newly occupied positions.
Andranik Kocharian, the pro-government chairman of the Armenian parliament
committee on defense and security, essentially acknowledged that.
“There have been no major positional changes so far,” Kocharian told reporters.
He expressed hope that as a result of ongoing negotiations the Azerbaijani
troops will withdraw from Tegh’s community lands occupied by them.
Echoing statements by opposition leaders, Kocharian said that the Armenian army
or border guards should have taken up positions along the Armenian side of the
Tegh border section ahead of the Azerbaijani advance. There must be an internal
inquiry into their failure to do that, he said.
“Why did it not happen? We must find answers to this question because … it was
avoidable,” Kocharian went on.
“I presume that we failed. If we did, those who failed continue to run some
structures in the lower or middle echelons, local governments,” he said.
The Armenian opposition has blamed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian for the latest
loss of Armenian territory, saying that he failed to issue necessary orders to
the military and other security forces.
Pashinian said on Thursday that Armenia should continue to exercise caution and
avoid another escalation even after the fresh Azerbaijani gains. He reaffirmed
his commitment to his “peace agenda.”
According to the mayor of Khnatsakh, an Armenian border village about 10
kilometers northwest of Tegh, later on Thursday, Azerbaijani forces opened fire
at Khnatsakh residents cultivating their land.
The official, Seyran Mirzoyan, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that none of the
villagers was wounded by the cross-border fire witnessed by him. But they had to
stop their work, he said.
The Armenian Defense Ministry did not report any shooting incidents from that
area.
Pashinian Again Phones Putin
Armenia - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Russian President Vladimir
Putin attend a CSTO summit in Yerevan, November 23, 2022.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian again telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin
on Friday to discuss Azerbaijan’s continuing blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh’s land
link with Armenia and Russian-Armenian relations that have soured in recent
months.
According to the official Armenian readout of the call, Pashinian raised with
Putin the “humanitarian crisis” in Karabakh resulting from the four-month
blockade.
“In the context of overcoming the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian prime
minister emphasized the importance of consistent steps by the Russian
peacekeeping mission,” said the statement.
The Kremlin reported that the two leaders “continued the discussion of various
aspects of the current situation in Nagorno-Karabakh” and reaffirmed their
commitment to Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements brokered by Moscow during and
after the 2020 war. It was their fourth phone conversation in two months.
Armenian leaders have repeatedly accused Russian peacekeepers of doing little to
unblock the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia. Moscow has rejected the
criticism. It has called for an end to the blockade.
Azerbaijan has ignored such calls also made by the West. Its troops tightened
the blockade on Mach 25 when they seized a hill overlooking a dirt road that
bypasses the blocked section of the Lachin corridor. The Russian peacekeepers
accused Baku of violating the 2020 ceasefire.
Putin and Pashinian spoke on Friday eleven days Moscow warned the Armenian
parliament against ratifying the International Criminal Court’s founding treaty.
Armenia’s Constitutional Court gave the green light for such ratification on
March 24 a week after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin over war crimes
allegedly committed by Russia in Ukraine. Pashinian’s domestic critics claimed
that he engineered the court ruling in order to further undermine Armenia’s
alliance with Russia.
The Kremlin said Putin and Pashinian also “touched upon topical issues of
bilateral relations.” It did not elaborate.
Pashinian’s office likewise said that they discussed “Armenian-Russian relations
and other developments taking place in them.”
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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