Thursday,
Russia ‘Continuing’ Peacekeeping Mission In Depopulated Karabakh
Nagorno-Karabakh - Russian peacekeepers stand next to an armored vehicle at a
checkpoint near Stepanakert, October 7, 2023.
Russian peacekeepers are continuing their mission in Nagorno-Karabakh two months
after the mass exodus of the region’s ethnic Armenian population caused by an
Azerbaijani military offensive, Russia’s top general said on Thursday.
Armenia has denounced the peacekeepers for their failure to prevent or stop the
September 19-20 offensive that restored Azerbaijan’s full control over Karabakh.
President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have rejected the criticism.
The chief of the Russian army’s General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, also
praised the peacekeepers. Meeting with Moscow-based foreign military attachés,
he said that the 2,000-strong contingent swiftly halted the September
hostilities before ensuring Karabakh Armenians’ “safe departure” to Armenia.
“Our military contingent continues to carry out tasks as a guarantor of the
possibility of building a peaceful life and the return of residents to the
region,” added Gerasimov.
Even before their exodus, Karabakh’s leaders and ordinary residents made clear
that they would not live under Azerbaijani rule. More than 100,000 of them took
refuge in Armenia in late September.
The peacekeepers have since dismantled most of their observation posts along the
Karabakh “line of contact” that existed until the Azerbaijani assault. A senior
Russian diplomat said in early October that they should remain in the region
because their mission “will also be necessary in the future.”
Putin and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev discussed the issue when they
met in Kyrgyzstan four days later. They announced no agreements on the future of
the Russian presence in Karabakh.
Armenian Authorities Suspend Russian Radio Broadcast
RUSSIA -- A view of the main newsroom of Sputnik news, part of the state run
media group Russia Today, in Moscow, April 27, 2018.
In a move denounced by Moscow on Thursday, Armenian authorities have suspended
the radio broadcast of Russia’s state-run Sputnik news agency in Armenia after
it aired a program highly critical of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
The Sputnik Armenia news service’s weekly program broadcast on November 17 was
authored and presented by Tigran Keosayan, a Russian film director and TV
commentator of Armenian descent. It featured disparaging comments about
Pashinian and his government’s policies.
Keosayan and his wife Margarita Simonyan, who runs the Russian television
network RT and several other Kremlin-funded media outlets, are vocal critics of
the current Armenian government. Simonyan was banned from entering the South
Caucasus country last year.
Armenia’s National Commission on Television and Radio (HRAH) on Wednesday
accused Keosayan of making “mocking and derogatory” statements about Armenia and
its people in breach of Armenian law. It said foreign nationals also have no
“moral right” to do that.
The commission announced that it has therefore banned an Armenian radio station
from retransmitting any Sputnik Armenia programs for the next 30 days.
The Russian Embassy in Yerevan criticized the decision the following day, saying
that it limited Armenians’ right to “receive information from a source of their
choice.”
“This step cannot but look like a concession to those who are increasingly in
favor of breaking the traditional, mutually beneficial and mutually respectful
allied relations between Russia and Armenia,” the embassy added in a statement.
Russia - Film director Tigran Keosayan and his wife Margarita Simonyan attend an
event in Moscow, February 12, 2018.
For his part, Keosayan responded to the ban by attacking and insulting Pashinian
on his Telegram channel. The Armenian premier “once again proved the correctness
of all my words addressed to him,” he wrote on Thursday.
The embassy statement noted that the HRAH’s decision came just three days after
Russian and Armenian government officials met to discuss Yerevan’s discontent
with Russian television’s recent coverage of Armenia. The two sides made
differing statements on that meeting.
Russian Ambassador Sergei Kopyrkin was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in
Yerevan in October after Russia’s leading state broadcaster, Channel One,
derided and lambasted Pashinian during an hour-long program aired. The program
featured pro-Kremlin panelists who portrayed Pashinian as a Western puppet
tasked with ending Armenia’s close relationship with Russia.
The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Armenian charge d’affaires in Moscow
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 amid rising tensions
between Moscow and Yerevan.
The HRAH on Wednesday also fined Sputnik Armenia 500,000 drams ($1,240) for the
latest talk show by former opposition parliamentarian Arman Abovian during which
he effectively accused Pashinian’s government of planning to cede much of
Armenia’s territory to Azerbaijan. The commission accused the broadcaster of
spreading false and unverified information.
Dozens Arrested After Fishing Ban In Armenian Lake
• Robert Zargarian
Armenia - Speedboats of the newly established water patrol service of the
Armenian police are seen in Lake Sevan, December 9, 2023.
More than two dozen Armenian fishers have been arrested after clashing with
officials enforcing a seasonal ban on fishing in the country’s Lake Sevan.
The Armenian government introduced the two-month ban on November 20 in an effort
to protect the vast lake’s endangered fish stocks during the annual spawning
period. But it was not until this month that it began enforcing the measure
extremely unpopular in Sevan’s coastal fishery-dependent communities.
Officers of a newly established water patrol unit of the national police and
representatives of the Sevan National Park clashed with residents of one of
those villages, Noratus, during a joint patrol on Tuesday.
According to a police report cited by Armenia’s Investigative Committee, their
two patrol boats were surrounded by as many as 200 smaller boats carrying angry
local fishers. The latter threw Molotov cocktails and other objects before some
of them boarded a Sevan National Park vessel and beat up its crew, the
law-enforcement agency said on Wednesday. The statement added that 26 attackers
were arrested and charged with “mass hooliganism” and violent assault after the
incident.
Noratus residents denied the official version of events as they blocked on
Wednesday a nearby highway to protest against the arrests and the fishing ban.
One of them said that the fishers themselves were attacked by the police while
trying to retrieve their fishing nets from the lake. Others accused the police
of sinking one of the fishing boats during the clash.
Armenia - A view of Lake Sevan, September 8, 2018.
The protesters also argued that fishing has long been their main source of
income in their community which is officially home to some 6,800 people.
“There is no other work here,” one middle-aged man told RFE/RL’s Armenian
Service. “Let them [the authorities] give us jobs, and everyone here would love
to stop fishing.”
“There is no spawning at the moment,” claimed another fisher. “The scientists
who say that are wrong. Spawning happens from January 1 to January 20.”
The authorities say that earlier this month they offered to delay the
enforcement of the ban by several days but were rebuffed by the locals.
Decades of overfishing are believed to have taken a heavy toll on Sevan’s main
species: trout and whitefish. The Sevan trout, an Armenian delicacy, became all
but extinct even before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing upsurge
in poaching. The lake’s whitefish population has also declined significantly
since the early 1990s.
Fishing bans repeatedly imposed by the current and former Armenian governments
have not been vigorously enforced until now.
Iran Reaffirms Opposition To Outside Powers In South Caucasus
Russia - Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi attends a meeting with Russian
President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, December 7, 2023.
“Extra-regional countries” must not be allowed to intervene in disputes in the
South Caucasus, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian in a phone call late on Wednesday.
“Care must be taken that the Caucasus region does not become a field of
competition for extra-regional countries and that its issues are handled by the
countries of the region and without the interference of outsiders,” Raisi was
quoted by his office as saying.
Raisi thus reaffirmed Iran’s strong opposition to Western presence in the
region, which is shared by Russia. He described it as “harmful for regional
peace and stability” during an October 23 meeting with Armenia’s visiting
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan.
Mirzoyan travelled to Tehran to attend a multilateral meeting with his
Azerbaijani, Iranian, Russian and Turkish counterparts held there within the
framework of the so-called “Consultative Regional Platform 3+3” launched in
December 2021 in Moscow. Georgia continues to boycott the platform, citing
continuing Russian occupation of its breakaway regions.
Amid its deepening rift with Moscow, Pashinian’s government is now pinning hopes
on Western efforts to broker an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal. Russian
officials claim that the main aim of those efforts is to drive Russia out of the
South Caucasus, rather than bring peace to the region.
Yerevan is also seeking to deepen Armenia’s ties with the United States and the
European Union. In September, it hosted a joint U.S.-Armenian military exercise
criticized by Moscow and Tehran.
According to the official Armenian readout of Pashinian’s call with Raisi, the
two leaders discussed Armenian-Iranian relations and the implementation of
bilateral economic agreements. Raisi’s office said in this regard that he
“expressed satisfaction with the process of developing relations and
implementing agreements between the two countries.”
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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