RFE/RL Armenian Report – 04/10/2023

                                        Monday, 


Woman Arrested For Throwing Umbrella At Pashinian


Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian visits Vayots Dzor province, April 10, 
2023.


Police in Armenia arrested a woman on Monday moments after she threw her 
umbrella at Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian during his visit to southeastern 
Vayots Dzor province.

The incident happened as Pashinian visited the village of Malishka and spoke to 
local officials and ordinary residents.

Armenia’s Investigative Committee said that the unidentified woman approached 
Pashinian and attacked him “in order to interfere with the legitimate official 
activities of the prime minister.” It said nothing about her motives.

In a statement, the law-enforcement agency added that “criminal proceedings” 
will likely be launched against her.

According to Armenian media outlets, the woman and her family are former 
residents of the town of Lachin which was handed back to Azerbaijan last summer 
following a change in the route of the land corridor connecting Armenia to 
Nagorno-Karabakh.

News.am quoted the Mailshka mayor, Garik Nazarian, as saying that the family 
rents a house in his village, one of the largest in the country.

The arrested woman’s husband told Aravot.am that the family’s housing issues is 
not what drove her to throw the umbrella at Pashinian. “I don’t have time to 
talk right now, but I’ll definitely talk later,” he said.




‘Azeri Soldier’ Detained In Armenia

        • Ruzanna Stepanian
        • Tigran Hovsepian

Armenia - A road sign at the entrance to the village of Bnunis, .


Armenian security forces on Monday detained one Azerbaijani man and hunted for 
another, who is also thought to have crossed into Armenia for unclear reasons.

The man was apprehended in Ashotavan, a village in Syunik province situated not 
far from Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave. Local residents said that he wore 
civilian clothes and carried no firearms.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said the Azerbaijani claims to be a soldier. “In 
his words, there was another serviceman with him, the search for whom is 
continuing,” it said in a short statement.

The Azerbaijani military reported, meanwhile, that two of its soldiers serving 
in Nakhichevan have done missing due to heavy fog. It did not identify them.

The Azerbaijanis were reportedly first spotted overnight in Bnunis, another 
village just a few kilometers south of the Syunik town of Sisian. Several local 
residents told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that they knocked on the door of fellow 
villager Shoghik Matevosian’s house.

“They didn’t talk,” said one of them. “They left when she shut the door.”

Matevosian and members of her family refused to comment.

Bnunis and Ashotavan are located about 20 kilometers from the nearest 
Azerbaijani army positions on Nakhichevan’s border with Syunik. It was not clear 
how they managed to cross the heavily militarized frontier and advance deep into 
Armenian territory undetected. Armenia’s Defense Ministry said nothing in this 
regard.

The incident left some local residents worried about their safety. They want the 
police or the military to patrol their streets.

“We now always lock our gate and entrance door,” said Khachik Manucharian, a 
70-year-old man living in Bnunis. “I don’t what could happen.”




Senior Armenian Official Visits Iran

        • Nane Sahakian

Iran - The secretary of Iran's Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, hosts his 
Armenian counterpart Armen Grigorian in Tehran, April 9, 2023.


The secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigorian, reportedly praised 
Iran’s policy towards the South Caucasus when he visited Tehran on Sunday amid 
escalating tensions between the Islamic Republic and Azerbaijan.

Grigorian’s office said that he discussed with his Iranian opposite number, Ali 
Shamkhani, the “security situation in the region” and Armenian-Iranian 
relations. It gave no details of their “working dinner.”

Iranian news agencies reported that Grigorian praised Iran for “promoting 
regional peace and stability” and said forging closer links with Tehran is a 
“top priority” for the Armenian government.

Shamkhani was reported to reaffirm Tehran’s opposition to any “geographic 
change” in the region.

Iranian leaders have repeatedly made such statements in response to Azerbaijan’s 
demands for an extraterritorial corridor to the Nakhichevan exclave that would 
pass through Syunik, the sole Armenian province bordering Iran. They have warned 
against attempts to strip the Islamic Republic of the common border and 
transport links with Armenia.

Lingering tensions between Iran and Azerbaijan have flared up in recent weeks 
partly due to Baku's deepening ties with Tehran's archenemy Israel, highlighted 
by the opening of an Azerbaijani embassy in Tel Aviv.

Meeting with his visiting Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov late last 
month, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen reportedly declared that the two 
nations will form a “united front” against Iran. The Iranian Foreign Ministry 
challenged Baku to explain implications of that statement.

Last week, Azerbaijani authorities expelled four Iranian Embassy employees and 
arrested six men who they said are linked to Iran's secret services. They also 
alleged Iranian involvement in an assassination attempt on an anti-Tehran 
Azerbaijani lawmaker.

Bayramov and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian discussed the 
rising tensions in a phone call on Saturday.

Amir-Abdollahian’s deputy, Ali Bagheri Kani, visited Yerevan late last month for 
what the Armenian Foreign Ministry described as “regular political 
consultations” between the two neighboring states. Kani spoke out against the 
presence of “external forces” in the South Caucasus.

Hakob Badalian, an Armenian political analyst, suggested on Monday that Yerevan 
has intensified diplomatic contacts with Tehran and other foreign partners 
lately to try to reduce heightened risks to regional security.

“I regard the interaction with Iran as one of the most important directions in 
this [endeavor,]” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.




Russian Envoy Downplays Rift With Armenia

        • Anush Mkrtchian

Armenia - Russian Ambassador Sergei Kopyrkin (right) poses for a photograph with 
Russian border guards on the Armenian-Turkish border, August 12, 2022.


Russia and Armenia will remain close allies despite unprecedented friction 
between, the Russian ambassador in Yerevan, Sergei Kopyrkin, said on Monday.

“There can be differences of opinion and evaluation between us, that’s normal,” 
Kopyrkin told reporters. “The volume of our relations is such that there may 
arise practical issues on which the parties have differing positions. But on the 
whole, I am confident that what unites us remains and will be reinforced. Our 
relations were, are and will be allied.”

Those relations have deteriorated in the last several months mainly because of 
what Yerevan sees as Moscow’s lack of support for its main South Caucasus ally 
in the conflict with Azerbaijan.

The rift between the two nations deepened further late last month after 
Armenia’s Constitutional Court gave the green light for parliamentary 
ratification of the International Criminal Court’s founding treaty. The ruling 
followed an arrest warrant issued by the ICC for Russian President Vladimir 
Putin over war crimes allegedly committed by Russia in Ukraine.

Moscow warned on March 27 that recognition of The Hague tribunal’s jurisdiction 
would have “extremely negative” consequences for Russian-Armenian relations. 
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government has since given no indications that 
it will press ahead with sending the treaty to the Armenian parliament for 
ratification.

Pashinian and Putin spoke by phone on Friday for the fourth time in two months. 
According to the Armenian readout of the call, they discussed regional security, 
bilateral ties and “other developments taking place in them.”

Pashinian phoned Putin three days after meeting in Yerevan with Alexei Overchuk, 
a Russian deputy prime minister mediating negotiations on restoring transport 
links between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In Kopyrkin’s words, Pashinian and Overchuk held “constructive” talks on the 
“entire complex of issues related to the region and their settlement.” The 
diplomat did not elaborate.




Prosecutors Move To Indict Armenian Opposition Lawmaker


Armenia - Parliament deputies Vladimir Vardanian (left) and Mher Sahakian.


Prosecutor-General Anna Vardapetian on Monday asked the Armenian parliament for 
permission to indict one of its opposition members who punched a pro-government 
colleague in disputed circumstances.

The violence occurred during an ill-tempered meeting of the parliament committee 
on legal affairs held on March 31. It reportedly followed a shouting match 
between Vladimir Vartanian, the committee chairman, and Mher Sahakian of the 
main opposition Hayastan alliance.

Sahakian was detained by police but set free three days later. He said he hit 
Vartanian because the latter spoke disrespectfully and then stood up and walked 
menacingly towards him. Vartanian, who represents Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, denied that, saying the assault was unprovoked.

Vardapetian backed the pro-government parliamentarian’s version of events in her 
letter asking the National Assembly to allow prosecutors to charge Sahakian with 
two counts of “hooliganism.” The chief prosecutor, who worked as an aide to 
Pashinian until last summer, stopped short of requesting a separate permission 
to arrest the opposition deputy pending investigation.

The parliament controlled by Civil Contract is expected to discuss and vote on 
lifting Sahakian’s immunity from prosecution on Tuesday.

Reacting to the development, Sahakian’s lawyer, Ruben Melikian, insisted that 
his client threw a punch “for the purpose of necessary self-defense” and did not 
commit any hooligan acts.

Another Hayastan parliamentarian, Kristine Vartanian, sarcastically “thanked” 
the authorities for seeking to prosecute Sahakian.

“This will, no doubt, be a good opportunity to discuss what happened in the 
National Assembly, present the truth to the public, expose the government's lies 
… and burst another bubble of the ruling force,” she wrote on Facebook.

Sahakian’s swift arrest and likely prosecution sharply contrast with the 
law-enforcement authorities’ response to ugly incidents involving lawmakers 
affiliated with the ruling party.

One of those pro-government lawmakers, Vahagn Aleksanian, kicked Hayastan’s Vahe 
Hakobian as the latter gave a speech on the parliament floor in August 2021. 
Hakobian and five other opposition deputies were hit by a larger number of Civil 
Contract lawmakers in an ensuing melee witnessed by Pashinian. Nobody was 
prosecuted in connection with that violence.

As recently as last week, the authorities faced calls to launch criminal 
investigation into parliament speaker Alen Simonian, who spat at an opposition 
heckler, and other pro-government deputies, who shouted verbal abuse and threats 
at an opposition candidate for the vacant post of Armenia’s human rights 
defender. One of those deputies publicly pledged to “cut the tongues and ears of 
anyone” who would make disparaging comments about the 2018 “velvet revolution” 
that brought Pashinian to power.

The Office of the Prosecutor-General has not ordered criminal investigations 
into either incident.


Reposted 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