Friday, U.S. Sanctions Armenia-Based Firm • Robert Zargarian U.S. - A bronze seal for the Department of the Treasury is shown at the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, January 20, 2023. The United States has added a Russian-owned firm registered in Armenia to its list of entities accused of helping Russia evade U.S. sanctions imposed since the invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) blacklisted on Wednesday more than 100 people and entities it said have violated U.S. export controls and helped Russia's war effort. The sanctions bar U.S. companies and individuals from any dealings with them and also freeze any assets the latter may hold in U.S. jurisdiction. The newly blacklisted entities include, TAKO LLC, a little-known company registered in Armenia in May last year about three months after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. According to the Armenian state registry, TAKO is fully owned by a Russian national, Vadim Verkhovtsev, and specializes in wholesale trade in electronic and telecommunications equipment and parts. No other details of its operations are known. TAKO’s registration address matches that of an office building in Yerevan. The building administration told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday that the company rented an office there until last fall. The OFAC said that TAKO has cooperated with the Russian company Radioavtomatika regarded by it as a supplier of electronic items to Russia’s defense industry. The U.S. sanctioned Radioavtomatika last year. TAKO is the first Armenia-based entity known to have been blacklisted by Washington in connection with the sweeping sanctions against Moscow. The development follows a series of meetings during which U.S. officials apparently pressed the Armenian government to comply with the sanctions. U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo discussed the issue with Armenia’s Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian in Washington on Tuesday. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, Adeyemo “highlighted the United States’ global efforts to prevent evasion of U.S. sanctions and export controls imposed on Russia.” In a joint “compliance note” issued month, the U.S. departments of Justice, Treasury and Commerce said that third-party intermediaries have commonly used China, Armenia, Turkey and Uzbekistan as “transshipment points” to Russia as well as Belarus. Russian-Armenian trade skyrocketed last year, with Armenian exports to Russia nearly tripling to $2.4 billion. Goods manufactured in third countries and re-exported from Armenia to Russia are believed to have accounted for most of that gain. Russian, Armenian FMs Meet Again Uzbekistan - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan meet in Samarkand, . Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov discussed bilateral ties and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict when they met on Friday for the third time in just over a month. The talks took place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan on the sidelines of a regular meeting of the top diplomats of ex-Soviet republics making up the Commonwealth of Independent States. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Lavrov again called for “intensifying efforts on all tracks of the Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization in accordance with the 2020-2022 agreements between the leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.” Russia regards those agreements as a blueprint for settling the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute. It has repeatedly accused the West of seeking to hijack them and sideline Moscow. Lavrov has been trying to host fresh talks between Mirzoyan and Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov. Speaking in the Armenian parliament on Wednesday, Mirzoyan indicated that he will meet with Bayramov soon. But he did not specify the date or the format of the meeting. Bayramov did not travel to Samarkand for the CIS ministerial gathering. The Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani ministers were scheduled to meet in Moscow last December. Yerevan cancelled the meeting in protest against Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin corridor. The Armenian Foreign Ministry said Mirzoyan again raised the issue with Lavrov and “emphasized the need to lift the blockade of the Lachin corridor.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan meet in Moscow, March 20, 2023. Armenian leaders have accused the Russian peacekeepers of doing little to restore traffic through the sole road connecting Armenia to Karabakh. Russian officials have strongly denied that. Mirzoyan was also reported to brief Lavrov on Tuesday’s fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border which left at least seven soldiers from both sides dead. He described the deadly clash as “yet another manifestation of Azerbaijan’s aggressive policy.” The two ministers held the fresh talks amid unprecedented friction between their countries. It stems in large measure from what Yerevan sees as Moscow’s reluctance to support its main regional in the protracted conflict with Azerbaijan. The rift 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. The official readouts of Lavrov’s latest meeting with Mirzoyan made no mention of this issue. Families Of Fallen Soldiers Again Protest In Yerevan • Artak Khulian Armenia - Parents of soldiers killed in the 2020 Karabakh war protest outside the Investigative Committee building in Yerevan, . Several dozen parents of Armenian soldiers killed during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war partly blocked a street in Yerevan for the second consecutive day on Friday to protest against authorities’ failure to prosecute police officers who used force against them. The same protesters gathered at the main entrance to Yerevan’s Yerablur Military Pantheon last September to try to prevent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian from laying a wreath there on the occasion of Armenia’s Independence Day. They blame Pashinian for the deaths of their sons as well as at least 3,800 other Armenian soldiers killed in action. Riot police violently dispersed the protesters shortly before senior officials led by Pashinian arrived at the military ceremony. At least 37 grief-stricken men and women were dragged away, forced into police vehicles and detained in dramatic scenes that caused uproar on social media. Armenia - Police detain the mother of an Armenian soldier killed in the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh at the Yerablur Military Pantheon, Yerevan, September 21, 2022. Armenia’s leading civic organizations strongly condemned the use of force and demanded the resignation of Vahe Ghazarian, the then chief of the national police. Ghazarian retained his post before being promoted and appointed by Pashinian as interior minister in January. While defending the use of force, Ghazarian ordered an internal inquiry into his officers’ actions at Yerablur. None of them has been fired or subjected to disciplinary action. Despite formally recognizing most of the detained parents as “victims” of violence, Armenia’s Investigative Committee has likewise not indicted any of the policemen in a separate, criminal investigation launched after the Yerablur crackdown. The angry parents decried this fact and demanded official explanations when they rallied outside the law-enforcement agency’s headquarters on Thursday evening. They also partly blocked traffic through a street adjacent to the building. The protest continued through the night and on Friday morning. Its participants also condemned Investigative Committee’s refusal to meet with them. Armenia - Armenian flags fly at Yerablur Military Pantheon by the graves of soldiers killed during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, January 28, 2022. “We have spent the night here,” said Gayane Hakobian, who lost her son Zhora Martirosian during the six-week war. Hakobian said that riot police officers must be held accountable despite apologizing to her and other parents during a joint interrogation. “We suffered more mental and moral injuries than physical ones,” she told journalists. In a statement, the Investigative Committee rejected the protesters’ demands as “illegal” and defended its officials’ refusal to hold more face-to-face meetings with them. It claimed that some parents shouted insults and made other “emotional” statements when they were received by investigators last fall. The protesters dismissed that explanation. As one of them put it, “They haven’t taken any investigative actions since our last meeting. They don’t come out [to meet the parents] simply because they have nothing to tell us.” Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2023 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.