Friday, Tycoon Expanding Presence In Armenian Energy Sector . Emil Danielyan Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian (L) and Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetian (R) inaugurate an energy lab at the National Polytechnic University in Yerevan, 5Jun2017. The government plans to authorize a company belonging to Samvel Karapetian, a Russian-Armenian billionaire, to manage Armenia's state-owned electricity transmission network for at least five years. The deal tentatively approved by the government on Thursday will further expand Karapetian's presence in the Armenian energy sector. The Armenian-born tycoon already owns the country's national electric utility and largest thermal power plant. Also, business entities controlled by him intend to build two major hydroelectric plants. Speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan, Deputy Minister for Energy Infrastructures Vartan Gevorgian said the planned deal will make the energy sector more efficient by "synchronizing" Armenia's power transmission and distribution networks. He said Karapetian's Tashir Kapital company based in Russia will also attract significant capital investments in the High-Voltage Electric Networks (BETs) and "optimize" its operational expenditures. A separate government statement clarified that Tashir Kapital will obtain large-scale loans that will be spent on refurbishing electricity transmission lines and substations and building new BETs facilities. In particular, it said, the new operator will complete the ongoing construction of a new high-voltage line that will connect Armenia to Georgia. Armenia - An electricity distribution facility. Gevorgian made clear that the signing of the management contract is conditional on Tashir Kapital submitting a plan of concrete actions and investment commitments by the end of this year. "The agreement will come into effect only after the trust management program is approved by the government," he said, according to the Arka news agency. The development comes nearly two years after Karapetian's Tashir purchased the debt-ridden Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA) utility and a large power plant in the Armenian town of Hrazdan from Inter RAO, a state-run Russian energy company.The new owner claims to have already cut ENA's massive losses. Another company owned Karapetian as well as an investment fund which he and other wealthy Russian businessmen of Armenian descent set up recently are due to start building soon a 76-megawatt hydroelectric in Armenia's northern Lori province. The government gave the green light to the $150 million project on August 10. The fund, called the Investors Club of Armenia (ICA), also plans to at least partly finance the planned construction of a 100-megawatt hydroelectric plant on the Arax river marking Armenia's border with Iran. The Armenian and Iranian governments have long been trying to implement the project. Karapetian is increasingly involved in Armenia's energy sector amid the declining presence there of state-owned Russian energy giants. With the 2015 sale of ENA and the Hrazdan plant, Inter RAO essentially pulled out of the country. Another Russian company, RusHydro, reaffirmed in June its intention to sell off Armenia's second most important hydroelectric complex belonging to it. RusHydro's withdrawal would leave only one Kremlin-controlled company, Gazprom, owning a power-generating facility in Armenia. Gazprom is also the country's principal supplier of natural gas. Armenia - Prime Minister Karen Karapetian (R) and Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetian announce the creation of a Russian-Armenian investment fund in Yerevan, 25Mar2017. Karapetian, 52, was born and raised in Armenia. He moved to Russia in the early 1990s, making a huge fortune there in the next two decades. His Tashir Group conglomerate comprises over a hundred firms engaged in construction, manufacturing, retail trade and other services. With total assets estimated by the "Forbes" magazine at $3.5billion, he is most probably the richest ethnic Armenian in the world. The Russian-Armenian tycoon is widely regarded as a figure close to Prime Minister Karen Karapetian (no relation). The latter lived in Russia and held senior positions in Gazprom subsidiaries before President Serzh Sarkisian appointed him to his current post last September. Samvel Karapetian and three dozen Russian-Armenian entrepreneurs issued a joint statement when Karen Karapetian paid an official visit to Moscow in January. They voiced "full support" for "profound reforms" promised by the premier and expressed readiness to "participate in business projects with the Armenian government." U.S. Hails Armenian Participation In NATO Drills . Sargis Harutyunyan Georgia -- U.S. Vice President Mike Pence addresses servicemen participating in the joint multinational military exercise 'Noble Partner 2017' at an airbase outside Tbilisi on August 1, 2017. A senior U.S. diplomat praised the Armenian military on Friday for participating in the latest NATO-led military exercises held in neighboring Georgia, calling that a "great example of Armenia's ability to balance its interests." "Armenia should be very proud," Richard Mills, the U.S. ambassador in Yerevan, told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). "It was the only [Collective Security Treaty Organization] member in this exercise." "And it contributed a very important component to this military exercise with the medical units that supported all the other nations that participated," he said. "That helped the Armenian military, that helped this exercise and, I think, it helped security in Europe overall." The two-week drills, which began in late July, involved about 2,800 soldiers from the United States, Georgia, Britain, Germany, Turkey, Ukraine, Slovenia and Armenia. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited the participating troops during an August 1 trip to Georgia. The participation of around 30 Armenian soldiers in the drills codenamed "Noble Partner" underscored Armenia's policy of complementing a military alliance with Russia with closer security ties to the West. Armenia -- U.S Ambassador Richard Mills speaks to RFE/RL, 25Aug2017 "Armenia does a good job of balancing its relationships with all its neighbors," said Mills. "That includes Russia, that includes Iran, and that includes the United States and the European Union." "The goal for our Armenian friends, for the Armenian government is to make sure that Armenia can make its own sovereign decisions about what path it should choose, what economic and political models it follows," Mills went on. "And we want to help give Armenia the tools to continue making sovereign choices and to make sure that it's not overly influenced or forced by others to follow certain paths that perhaps Armenia doesn't want to follow." Armenia has deepened defense cooperation with the U.S. and other NATO member states since the early 2000s. It currently contributes more than 100 troops to NATO-led missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan and regularly participates in multinational exercises organized by the U.S. military. Those troops are part of the Armenian army's Peacekeeping Brigade that has received considerable U.S. assistance. A U.S.-funded renovation of the brigade's main training center began as recently as in March. Mills stressed that U.S.-Armenian military has had a "much broader" scope. In his words, the United States has provided almost $50 million worth of military equipment and trained over 200 Armenian military personnel since 2002. Armenia - Armenian Defense Minister Vigen Sargsian (second from right), U.S. Ambassador Richard Mills (right) inaugurate the start of the revonation of the Zar Military Training Facility, 3Mar2017. The envoy also revealed that the U.S. offered to help Armenia last year to "learn lessons" from the April 2016 fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh. The four-day hostilities left at least 190 Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers dead and nearly escalated into an all-out war. They were halted by a Russian-mediated agreement. "After the tragic fighting in April [2016] we approached our friends in the [Armenian] Ministry of Defense to talk to them about the lessons learned from that in terms of the military structure, mission command, communication # whether we could provide some assistance and how the U.S. military does its after-action reports. "The answer was that the ministry would be very interested in that. That was a program we had in place. But I think that it became a little bit of higher priority after the April events." Mills added that the commander of U.S. Army Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, personally discussed the issue with Armenia's top military officials when he visited Yerevan in May 2016. The diplomat further made clear that while Washington is committed to Armenia's security it will continue to avoid selling offensive weapons to any of the parties to the Karabakh conflict. "I think that is one area where we differ from Russia," he said. The U.S., Russia and France have long been jointly spearheading international efforts to end the Karabakh conflict. Mass Shooting Suspect Tracked Down By Armenian Police Armenia - Forensic experts inspect a dining hall in the village of Shamiram where four men were killed and seven others wounded, 1Aug2017. Police tracked down and arrested on Friday a man accused of killing four people and wounding seven others in an Armenian village almost a month ago. The 50-year-old suspect, Telman Kalashian, allegedly went on a shooting spree on August 1 as several hundred men gathered in Shamiram, a village about 50 kilometers west of Yerevan, to mark a Yazidi religious feast. Law-enforcement authorities say he fled the scene with the help of his uncle. The latter was arrested on August 2. Kalashian, who lived in another village also mostly populated by ethnic Yazidis, remained on the run for more than three weeks. An Armenian police spokesman said he was caught in his home province, Armavir, but gave no details of his arrest. Another law-enforcement body, the Investigative Committee, formally charged Kalashian with several counts of murder later in the day. It was not immediately clear whether he confessed to the killings. In a statement, the Investigative Committee said the root cause of shooting was $75,000 which Kalashian lent in 2013 to five other Armenian-born men, all of them brothers, who lived and worked in Russia. It said the Khudoyan brothers subsequently paid back only $45,000, leading Kalashian's to press their relatives and friends in Armenia to help him get back the rest of the sum. According to the statement, the suspect traded insults with one of those friends, German Kyaramian, by phone hours before heading to Shamiram and opening fire inside a village dining hall. Aziz Tamoyan, a leader of Armenia's Yazidi community, also attributed the mass shooting to money owed to Kalashian when he spoke to journalists in Yerevan on August 2. Press Review "Zhoghovurd" comments on Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov's visit to Armenia and talks held with President Serzh Sarkisian. The paper scoffs at Sarkisian's remark that he is "very buoyed" by Berdimuhamedov's desire to implement large-scale economic projects with Armenia. It says that trade between the two countries is minuscule and there have been no Turkmen investments in the Armenian economy in recent years. "Hraparak" is unconvinced by government assurances that the outgoing U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, Richard, Hoagland, did not reveal anything new when it published the six main elements of a framework peace accord on Karabakh put forward by the American, Russian and French mediators. The paper alleges that Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian's reaction to the document means that the authorities are "alarmed" by possible public reactions to Armenian concessions sought by the mediators. Arman Melikian, a former Karabakh foreign minister, tells "Aravot" that Hoagland's statement corresponds to "the letter and the spirit" of the so-called Madrid Principles of the conflict's resolution which were first proposed to the parties in 2007. He speculates that the U.S. diplomat is "protecting" the Armenian side against a much less favorable peace deal. "Haykakan Zhamanak" reports that Armenian exports of tomatoes to Russia fell by about 40 percent in the first half of this year. The paper claims that Armenia simply stopped re-exporting Turkish tomatoes to Russia in that period. (Tigran Avetisian) Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2017 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org