Monday, Karabakh Leader Joins Protests Against Azeri Blockade Nagorno Karabakh - The Karabakh president, Arayik Harutiunian, joins a sit-in in the center of Stepanakert, July17, 2023. Nagorno-Karabakh’s president announced late on Monday that he is joining ongoing protests in Stepanakert against Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin corridor in a bid to draw greater international attention to the worsening plight of the region’s ethnic Armenian population. Arayik Harutiunian said that the Karabakh Armenians are not only struggling with severe shortages of food, medicine and energy but also facing a “real threat of physical annihilation.” He said he expects Armenia, Russia, the United States and the European Union to back up their calls for the lifting of the blockade with concrete actions and to uphold Karabakh’s right to self-determination. “If the plight of the people of Artsakh does not return within a week to a more or less stable and normal state with international intervention, then we will resort to tougher actions both in Artsakh and outside of it,” he warned before joining a nonstop sit-in staged in Stepanakert’s central square. Thousands of people rallied there on Friday at the start of the daily protests organized by Karabakh’s leadership. They marched to the headquarters of the Russian peacekeeping contingent to demand that it unblock Karabakh’s only land link with Armenia and the outside world. Azerbaijan further tightened the blockade on June 15, banning all relief supplies to Karabakh carried out by the peacekeepers as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross. This only aggravated the shortages of food, medicine, fuel and other essential items experienced by the local population. The Russian Foreign Ministry “strongly” urged the Azerbaijani side on Saturday to lift the blockade and unblock Armenia’s supplies of electricity and natural gas to Karabakh. Baku rejected the call and criticized Moscow in unusually strong terms. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko deplored Baku’s “incorrect” reaction during a meeting with the Azerbaijani ambassador in Moscow on Monday. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Rudenko insisted on “the need for complete and immediate unblocking of the Lachin corridor” and Baku’s compliance with relevant provisions of the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani ceasefire. The U.S. and the EU likewise renewed last week their calls for the resumption of traffic through the corridor. The issue was on the agenda of Saturday’s talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders hosted by the EU head, Charles Michel, in Brussels. Still, an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty was apparently the main focus of the summit. Rudenko reiterated a Russian proposal to organized more talks on the treaty which Moscow says must put in place security guarantees for Karabakh’s population. Court Upholds Arrest Of Armenian Opposition Leader • Naira Bulghadarian Armenia - Opposition leader Armen Ashotian speaks at a news conference in Yerevan. An Armenian appeals court on Monday refused to order the release of Armen Ashotian, a prominent opposition politician arrested last month on what he and his Republican Party (HHK) call politically motivated charges. Ashotian was charged last November with abuse of power and money laundering in connection with his past chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of Yerevan’s Mkhitar Heratsi Medical University. The accusations, strongly denied by him, stem from a number of property acquisitions carried out by the university administration on his alleged orders. Armenia’s Investigative Committee claims that those deals caused the state-run university substantial financial damage. The law-enforcement agency also charged Ashotian with “waste” of public funds following his arrest on June 15 which it attributed to his alleged attempts to obstruct its investigation. The oppositionist, who is the HHK’s deputy’s chairman, denies such interference. The opposition party headed by former President Serzh Sarkisian has condemned Ashotian’s arrest as government retribution for his harsh criticism of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s policy on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Pashinian’s government and political allies insist that he did not order the investigators and courts to prosecute his vocal critic. Ashotian’s lawyer, Tigran Atanesian, asked the Anti-Corruption Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court’s decision to allow investigators to hold his client in pre-trial detention for at least two months. One of the high court’s judges, Artur Nahapetian, rejected the appeal. Atanesian said the decision was predictable because Nahapetian is a “close friend” of Argishti Kyaramian, the head of the Investigative Committee and one of Pashinian’s trusted lieutenants. Armenia - Republican Party (HHK) activists protest against HHK deputy chairman Armen Ashotian's arrest, Yerevan, July 4, 2023. Ashotian, 47, was an influential figure during Sarkisian’s rule, serving as education minister from 2012-2016 and subsequently heading the Armenian parliament’s foreign relations committee. Ashotian’s supporters have also condemned the authorities for sending to him to Yerevan’s Nubarashen prison whose inmates include individuals convicted of murders and other violent crimes. The Investigative Committee has declined to clarify why he is not held in two other prisons reserved for former government and security officials. Vartan Harutiunian, a veteran human rights activist, suggested that the committee’s choice of the prison is an additional punishment for Ashotian. “Had he been kept in another prison he would have found himself in a very different human environment,” Harutiunian said, pointing to the presence of many violent criminals at Nubarashen. The authorities have also banned Ashotian’s family members from visiting him in the prison. In addition, unlike many other criminal suspects and convicts, the former minister is not allowed to talk to them by phone. Azerbaijan Rejects Russian Calls To Reopen Lachin Corridor • Heghine Buniatian • Astghik Bedevian A view of an Azerbaijani checkpoint set up at the entry of the Lachin corridor, by a bridge across the Hakari river, May 2, 2023. Azerbaijan has rejected Russia’s latest calls for an immediate end to its seven-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh’s only land link with Armenia which has led to a serious humanitarian crisis in the Armenian-populated region. In a weekend statement, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry defended Baku’s decisions to set up a checkpoint in the Lachin corridor and block relief supplies carried out through it by Russian peacekeepers. It accused the peacekeepers of not preventing Armenia’s alleged shipments of weapons and military personnel to Karabakh and not ensuring the “withdrawal of the remnants of Armenian military units from Azerbaijani territory.” “Armenian army units on the contrary receive assistance under the guidance of the Russian peacekeeping mission,” it said without offering proof of the allegations strongly denied by Armenia. Baku reacted to Saturday’s statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry expressing serious concern over the worsening shortages of food, medicine and other essential supplies in Karabakh and warning of even more “dramatic” consequences of the blockade. The Azerbaijani side dismissed those concerns, saying that Karabakh can be supplied with basic necessities from Azerbaijan proper and the town of Aghdam in particular. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev apparently insisted on this idea during his latest trilateral meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and European Union head Charles Michel held in Brussels on Saturday. Michel said after the talks that as well as urging Aliyev to reopen the Lachin corridor he “noted Azerbaijan’s willingness to equally provide humanitarian supplies via Aghdam.” “I see both options as important and encouraged the humanitarian deliveries from both sides to ensure the needs of the population are met,” he said. Karabakh’s leadership rejected the Aghdam option earlier, saying that it is a ploy designed to facilitate the restoration of Azerbaijani control over Karabakh. Michel’s reference to it was constructed by some Armenian analysts and critics of Pashinian’s government as a serious setback for the Armenian side. One of those analysts, Tigran Grigorian, on Monday decried “the inactivity and incompetence of the Armenian diplomacy.” “By including such a point in the statement [by Michel] and putting that point on the same plane with the issue of unblocking the Lachin corridor … Azerbaijan will be able to nullify the previous decisions of various international structures -- and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in particular -- regarding the unblocking of the Lachin corridor,” Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. The ICJ court ordered Azerbaijan in February to “take all measures at its disposal to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles, and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions.” The European Court of Human Rights issued a similar order in December. The Armenian Foreign Ministry pointed to those injunctions on Monday. “Other international actors should follow this line,” the ministry spokeswoman, Ani Badalian, said in a Twitter post that may have been a veiled rebuke of Michel. 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.