Fridayt, Baku Again Rejects Armenian-Azeri Troop Disengagement • Shoghik Galstian ARMENIA -- A view of Azerbaijani (L) and Armenian army posts on the on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, June 18, 2021 Azerbaijan has rejected Armenia’s renewed calls for a mutual withdrawal of the two countries’ troops from their long and volatile border. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian first came up with the idea of troop disengagement in May 2021 shortly after Azerbaijani forces advanced into Armenian territory at several sections of the border. The idea was subsequently backed by the European Union and the United States but not Azerbaijan. Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said earlier this week that Yerevan still hopes that Baku will agree to the mutual troop withdrawal. He said it would be a fresh confidence-building measure following the latest exchange of Armenian and Azerbaijani prisoners welcomed by the international community. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov dismissed Mirzoyan’s calls during a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan held in Baku on Thursday. “The Armenian-Azerbaijani border has not been delimited,” said Bayramov. “It’s a complex issue. If the troops are withdrawn without a comprehensive agreement who can guarantee that one of the parties will not seize [border] positions.” Arsen Torosian, an Armenian lawmaker representing the ruling Civil Contract party, criticized this stance on Friday, saying that Baku wants to keep up pressure on the Armenian side in ongoing talks on a bilateral peace treaty and border delimitation. Torosian also questioned Baku’s commitment to a “genuine peace.” Armenian Speaker Won’t Rule Out CSTO Exit • Satenik Kaghzvantsian Armenia - Parliament speaker Alen Simonian speaks to journalists, Yerevan, November 28, 2023. Parliament speaker Alen Simonian on Friday accused the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) of “criminal inaction” and did not rule out the possibility of Armenia’s exit from the Russian-led military alliance. “If Armenia’s interests require any [foreign policy] U-turn, there will be such a U-turn,” Simonian told reporters in Gyumri. “If such a decision is made the people of Armenia will know about it.” “On a number of occasions, the CSTO has demonstrated criminal inaction, to say the least, towards Armenia,” he charged. “Let nobody think that we expected or expect soldiers of [other] CSTO countries to come here and shoot at Azerbaijanis. But we should have at least seen a political evaluation [of Azerbaijan’s actions,] and we haven’t seen it.” Simonian, who is a leading political ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, referred to the CSTO’s and Russia’s failure to condemn Azerbaijan’s offensive military operations launched along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border last year and in 2021. Armenia officially requested military aid from its ex-Soviet allies in September 2022. Pashinian subsequently pledged to “diversify” his Armenia’s foreign and security policy, saying that Russia is “unable or unwilling” to honor its security commitments to his country. He and other Armenian officials have boycotted high-level CSTO meetings held in recent months, raising growing questions about Armenia’s continued membership in the alliance. It contrast to his harsh criticism of the CSTO, Simonian said Armenia should remain a member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a Russian-led trade bloc, and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a larger and looser grouping of former Soviet republics. He pointed to its economic dependence on Russia and described the CIS as a “platform for cooperation that benefits our country.” Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested on Thursday that Yerevan is not planning to leave any of the three organizations. “I don’t think that it is in Armenia’s interests to end its membership in the CIS, the EEU and the CSTO,” Putin told a year-end news conference in Moscow. Moscow Warns Yerevan Against Scrapping Russian-Brokered Deals Armenia - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk, Yerevan, . Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian met with Russia’s visiting Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk on Friday one day after Moscow accused Yerevan of not complying with a Russian-brokered agreement to open the Armenian-Azerbaijani border to travel and commerce. The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday also warned Pashinian’s administration against walking away from this and other agreements that were brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin during and after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. “In the absence of a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan, we consider attempts to revoke these important documents extremely dangerous,” the ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said in a statement. “Such a step would inevitably result in serious risks, primarily for Armenia itself.” Yerevan cannot manage those risks “with the help of Western pseudo-intermediaries,” Zakharova warned. She went on to deplore “a whole series of actions by Yerevan due to which it was not possible to fully implement the trilateral agreements.” “In particular, for many months the Armenian side has been blocking the start of work to restore railway communication between Azerbaijan and Armenia, refusing to comply with the provisions of paragraph 9 of the high-level statement of November 9, 2020,” she said. The paragraph stipulates that Russian border guards stationed in Armenia will “control” the movement of people, vehicles and goods between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenian territory. A senior Armenian official said earlier this year that this only allows them to “monitor” the commercial traffic, rather than escort it, let alone be involved in border controls. Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, left, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan attend a trilateral meeting in Moscow, May 25, 2023. The Azerbaijani government is understood to have demanded that the special transport link for Nakhichevan be exempt from Armenian border controls. Armenia has repeatedly ruled out that. The issue was high on the agenda of Pashinian’s meeting with Overchuk, who is also a co-chair of a Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani task force dealing with planned transport links. The Armenian premier was cited by his press office as telling Overchuk that Yerevan remains committed to “unblocking regional transport infrastructure based on the principles of sovereignty, jurisdiction, equality and reciprocity.” A statement by the office gave no other details of their talks. Mher Grigorian, an Armenian deputy premier and another co-chair of the trilateral commission, was also in attendance. The Sputnik news agency quoted Overchuk as saying later on Friday that the commission has worked out a “document” on the Armenian-Azerbaijani rail link which is “in a high degree of readiness" for signing. He did not say what exactly keeps the sides from signing it and whether that could happen anytime soon. Nor did he criticize Yerevan in that regard. Overchuk spoke after co-chairing with Grigorian a regular session of a separate Russian-Armenian intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation. The main purpose of the 2020 agreement cited by Zakharova was to stop fighting in Karabakh and prevent new hostilities. The deal also called for the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh and gave them control over the Lachin corridor connecting the region to Armenia. The peacekeepers did not push back when Baku disrupted commercial and humanitarian traffic through the corridor in December 2022 and set up a checkpoint there in April in breach of the ceasefire. Nor did they intervene when the Azerbaijani army went on the offensive in Karabakh on September 19, forcing its practically entire population to flee to Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh - Ethnic Armenians pass through a Russian checkpooint as they flee Karabakh for Armenia, 26 September 2023. Unlike the European Union and the United States, Russia did not even denounce the offensive. Pashinian and other Armenian leaders have said that Moscow’s stance constituted an even more serious violation of the truce accord. Zakharova’s statement essentially blamed Armenia for the assault, backing Azerbaijani allegations that it supplied weapons to Karabakh through Lachin and did not withdraw all Armenian troops from the disputed territory. Yerevan has strongly denied the allegations that were never publicly echoed by the Russian peacekeepers. Zakharova also repeated Russian claims that Pashinian sealed the fate of the Karabakh Armenians by recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh during talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev organized by the EU in October 2022 and May 2022. Putin likewise said on Thursday Karabakh was “abandoned” by Armenia, not Russia. Moscow’s latest warning to Yerevan came amid unprecedented tensions between the two longtime allies and ongoing Western efforts to broker an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. In particular, the U.S. is now trying to agree a new date for a meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers which was due to take place in Washington on November 20. Baku cancelled the meeting, citing what it called pro-Armenian statements made by a senior U.S. official. Conflicting Claims On Russian TV Coverage Of Armenia • Nane Sahakian Armenia - Armenia's Deputy Minsiter of High-Technology Avet Poghosian and Russia's Deputy Minister of Mass Communication Bella Cherkesova sign a joint statement in Yerevan. Russia has denied admitting that its leading state-owned TV channels have violated terms of their retransmission in Armenia agreed by the governments of the two countries three years ago. A relevant Russian-Armenian agreement signed in December 2020 allowed the two channels as well as the Kultura TV station affiliated with one of them to retain their slots in Armenia’s national digital package accessible to TV viewers across the country. The agreement bars them from commenting on domestic Armenian politics and spreading “hate speech.” Armenia’s National Commission on Television and Radio has recently accused the Kremlin-controlled broadcasters of violating this provision amid a further deterioration of Russian-Armenian relations. In September, an Armenian pro-government lawmaker called for a ban on their retransmission, saying that the Russian broadcasts pose a threat to the South Caucasus nation’s security. She appeared to allude to their reports critical of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. The Armenian Ministry of High-Technology pledged to raise the matter with the Russian government. In a statement released on Thursday, the ministry said senior officials from the Russian Ministry of Digital Development and Mass Communication acknowledged violations of the retransmission agreement during talks held with its representatives. “An agreement was reached to take steps towards proper compliance with all points of the agreement,” it said. The Russian ministry was quick to deny this in a statement cited by Russian news agencies, however. “The Russian side took note of the concerns of the Armenian side. However, no specific documentary evidence of these facts was provided by [Armenian] colleagues,” read the statement. It added that the two sides agreed to “ensure full implementation of the agreement” and “maintain close cooperation.” The Armenian ministry insisted on Friday that the Russian side the “accepted the fact of violations” in a joint communiqué adopted by them. It noted at the same time that the Armenian side avoided holding a “substantive discussion” of those violations during the talks. RUSSIA -- The flag of Channel One at the Ostankino TV Center in Moscow, October 28, 2019 The Armenian government faced more calls from its supporters and Western-funded groups to ban the retransmission after Russia’s leading state broadcaster, Channel One, derided and lambasted Pashinian during an hour-long program aired in October. The program featured pro-Kremlin panelists who denounced Pashinian’s track record and portrayed him as a Western puppet tasked with ending Armenia’s close relationship with Russia. The Armenian Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador to protest against “offensive and absolutely unacceptable statements” made during the show. The Armenian charge d’affaires in Moscow was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry the following day. Ministry officials condemned what they called anti-Russian propaganda spread by Armenia’s government-controlled media. In the last few years, Armenian Public Television has regularly interviewed and invited politicians and commentators highly critical of Moscow to its political talk shows. Their appearances in prime-time programs of the TV channel run by Pashinian’s loyalists have become even more frequent lately. 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.