12:41,
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 15, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Artsakh reported today that an additional 51 of its servicemen have been killed in action during the war.
The total death toll in the Artsakh Defense Army has reached 1434.
On November 14 Armenian healthcare ministry’s spokesperson Alina Nikoghosyan stated that to date the forensic service has examined bodies of 2137 killed servicemen, which also include unidentified ones.
Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
21:46,
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. President of Russia Vladimir Putin held telephone conversations with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the Kremlin.
It’s mentioned that the practical aspects of the implementation of the November 9 agreement were discussed. The sides expressed satisfaction for the preservation of the ceasefire, noting that the situation on the contact line is quite calm.
Talking with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, Vladimir Putin particularly focused on the fact that there are Christian cathedrals and churches in the territories that will go under Azerbaijani control according to the agreement, emphasizing the importance of ensuring their maintenance and operation. The Azerbaijani president demonstrated understanding in that regard, saying that the Azerbaijani side will be faithful to that principle.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan addressed the nation today, explaining why he was forced to sign, in his words, the "infamous document."
According to him, the enemy had reached Shushi and Stepanakert. "These cities were in the rear during the war, they did not have defensive structures, and what would have happened after the fall of these cities? Several defensive sectors of the Defense Army would have been surrounded by the enemy, which means that more than 20,000 of our soldiers would have been under threat," Pashinyan said, adding that in these conditions, the fall of Kashatagh and Karvachar districts would have been inevitable.
The Prime Minister explained that the moment they realized that the Armenian soldier could not influence events, soldiers would no longer have to die for the motherland, instead the motherland would make a sacrifice for the soldiers.
"According to this logic, I signed the infamous document known to all of you, and when I signed it, I realized that the probability that I would personally die is great not only in the political but also in the physical sense, but the life of 25 thousand soldiers was more important, I think, for you too."
These soldiers, according to the head of government, had no chance to influence the situation that would unfold in the rear.
"It was time for the commander to endanger his own life for the lives of these soldiers, time for the Motherland to make sacrifices for the soldiers that spared nothing for sake of the Motherland," Pashinyan said, explaining that in this situation it was necessary to make a decision within a few hours, otherwise the process would have started, which could have ended with the death of 25 thousand soldiers or their capture.
He also touched upon the issue of resignation. "And why didn't I resign, so as not to sign this paper, because it would mean desertion, it would mean leaving the issue of fulfilling the hellish duty in the name of the soldiers on someone else's shoulders."
According to Nikol Pashinyan, the Karabakh issue is still not resolved. The next question that arises, according to him, is why in such conditions it was impossible to reach a ceasefire at the beginning of the war or a little later. "To do this, it was necessary to hand over seven districts without a fight, as well as Shushi, and we hoped that with the involvement of new resources, superhuman efforts, we would be able to make a breakthrough," Pashinyan said. According to him, this is the reason that he and the President of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan periodically made calls for military conscription.
Pashinyan also touched upon the content of the document itself, saying that it is really bad for us, but we should not make it worse than it really is.
"In particular, there are rumors spreading about the surrender of Meghri, which is absolutely ridiculous, we are just talking about unblocking transport routes in the region, including from Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan, but this means that transport routes from Yerevan to Syunik via Nakhichevan, including the railway connection between Armenia and Iran, should also be unblocked," the Prime Minister said, adding that this may have a significant impact on our economy.
As for the territories under the control of Artsakh, according to Pashinyan, thanks to the Russian peacekeepers, the Lachin corridor from Goris to Stepanakert will operate smoothly, and Russian peacekeepers will provide the same safe road across the entire territory in the Shushi section.
He also called on residents of the territories located within the perimeter of the deployment of peacekeepers to return to their homes, if viable
He also said that the international recognition of the Republic of Artsakh is becoming an absolute priority. "There are stronger arguments for this now."
According to Pashinyan, at the moment, restoring the atmosphere of stability and security in the country is a priority for Armenia.
"The organizers and many of the active participants in the civil strife have been detained, but they will be identified and brought to justice.
"For decades, the country's property and income have flowed into the pockets of people you know well, and not towards the development of the army," the Prime Minister said.
According to him, our country has a future, and we must do everything to make this difficult test of ours an important cornerstone of this future.
"We must learn a lesson. Many will ask whether it is possible to talk about a good future after this brutal war. Yes, because there are countries in the world that were subjected to the most brutal capitulations of the 20th century, but today they are among the most powerful countries in the world."
November 10, 2020
President Armen Sarkissian met with ARF leaders on Nov 10
Hours after calling for consultations with political forces in Armenia, to find consensus regarding the fate of Artsakh, President Armen Sarkissian on Tuesday met with leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.
These consultations were spurred by the revelation that the president was not consulted nor was he engaged in discussions about the agreement signed by prime minister Nikol Pashinyan and the Russian and Azerbaijani presidents late Monday to end the Karabakh war.
In a statement on Tuesday, Sarkissian said any agreement on Artsakh must stem from Armenian national interests and must be concluded through a national consensus.
ARF Bureau member Armen Rustamyan and ARF Supreme Council of Armenia member Artsvik Minasyan met with president Sarkissian to discuss the unexpected situation created in the country following the revelation of the end of war agreement, which among other provisions, stipulates the surrender of Armenian territories in Artsakh—including Shushi—to Artsakh.
Holding the current leadership squarely responsible for the situation at hand, the ARF leaders expressed their concerns about the incredible threats the agreement poses to Armenia and presented their view on addressing the situation.
The sides emphasized the importance of national consensus for the settlement of Karabakh conflict, calling it an issue of national importance.
President Sarkissian underscored the need for preserve stability, public accord and unity in the country.
Sarkissian’s announcement Tuesday signaled that he was caught off guard about the agreement, saying he found out about it and its provisions through the press.
The president also held separate meetings Tuesday with leaders of the Republican Party of Armenia, as well as the parliamentary Bright Armenia party and non-parliamentary Homeland and Heritage parties.
15:29, 8 November, 2020
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 8, ARMENPRESS. The death toll in the Azerbaijani military as a result of the large-scale aggression launched against Artsakh since September 27 has reached 7630, the Armenian Unified Info Center reports.
As for the military equipment, the losses of the Azerbaijani side include 264 UAVs, 16 helicopters, 25 warplanes, 784 armored equipment and 6 TOS launchers.
Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
12:49, 9 November, 2020
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. The Azerbaijani military’s attempts to attack Martuni, Martakert, Taghavard and other areas are thwarted, Armenian Defense Ministry official Lt. Colonel Artsrun Hovhannisyan said.
“Besides Shushi, the battles taking place in other directions are also important. The enemy’s attempts to attack have failed in the Martuni direction, Martakert direction, Taghavard and elsewhere. The battles in all parts are extremely important,” Hovhannisyan said.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
The current fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out on Sept. 27, with Azerbaijani forces moving into the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The two countries, both former Soviet republics, have been fighting over the region since before the collapse of the Soviet Union. A ceasefire agreement brought an end to that initial fighting in 1994, with the self-declared, Armenian-backed Republic of Artsakh being the de facto authority in the territory ever since. There have been multiple significant skirmishes between the two sides since then.
While the Kremlin has yet to publicly blame anyone for the shootdown and no party in the region has taken responsibility, there is already growing speculation that Azerbaijani forces in Nakhchivan may have been responsible. The incident appears to have taken place at night and Armenia also operates Mi-24s, raising the distinct possibility that troops in the Azerbaijani autonomous region may have believed the helicopter to have been Armenian. Yeraskh is less than five miles from the Armenian border with Nakhchivan.
Since the latest conflict over Nagoro-Karabakh first erupted in September, there have been concerns about a potential Russian intervention into the fighting. Armenia is notably a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) bloc, as is Russia, which includes collective security provisions.
The Kremlin had previously said that it would not intervene unless Armenia proper came under attack. Azerbaijan has launched artillery and ballistic missile strikes into Armenian territory since then. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan formally asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for unspecified security assistance on Oct. 31, but it's unclear what support Russia may have provided since then. There were already unconfirmed reports before then that Russian personnel in the country had been assisting the Armenians, including with electronic warfare systems to counter Azerbaijan's distinct advantage in armed drones and loitering munitions, also called "suicide drones," which have been a major factor in the fighting so far.
For its part, Azerbaijan has been receiving significant support from Turkey, which publicly supports its current campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh. A contingent of Turkish Air Force F-16 Vipers have also notably been in that country since July, though it remains unclear if they have taken a direct part in the conflict. Turkey has also facilitated the transport of Syrian militants to the region to fight on behalf of the government in Baku. There are other unconfirmed claims that Turkish special operations forces may be on the ground assisting Azerbaijani forces.
If Russia determines Azerbaijani forces were responsible for the shootdown and that the incident was not a case of mistaken identity or some other kind of accident, it could well change the Kremlin's position on its role in the conflict. This, in turn, would increase the risks of further escalation, especially if Turkey were to become more directly involved.
In the meantime, the fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan shows no signs of letting up despite international calls for the two sides to seek a non-violent resolution to the crisis. There have been three failed ceasefire attempts already, each of which has collapsed within 24 hours of the agreed start time.
Whatever happens next, the shootdown of the Russian Mi-24 is a dangerous new development in the conflict and underscores the continued risk of it becoming a broader, regional affair.
We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.
UPDATE: 1:55pm EST
The Azerbaijni Foreign Ministry has now confirmed that its forces shot down the Russian Mi-24 with a MANPADS, but also say that it was case of mistaken identity.
"The helicopter was flying in the close vicinity of the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border at the time of active hostilities in the zone of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The flight was taking place after dark, at a low altitude, outside the air defense radar detection zone. Helicopters of the Russian Armed Forces had not been detected in said area previously," Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "In the context of the aforementioned factors and in the light of the tense situation in the region and the high military alert due to possible provocations of the Armenian side, the on-duty operational crew made the decision to use deadly force."
"The Azerbaijani side apologizes to the Russian side over this tragic incident, which was of an accidental nature and was not aimed against the Russian side," the statement continued. "The Azerbaijani side sends its deepest condolences to the families of the crew members killed in the incident and wishes the soonest recovery to those injured. The Azerbaijani side is ready to pay the corresponding damages."
Contact the author: [email protected]
13:30, 6 November, 2020
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 6, ARMENPRESS. Turkey’s national public broadcaster TRT has unsurprisingly fired the journalist who was the author of the “Azerbaijan attacks the peaceful population” headline.
Mehmet Karaca, en editor at TRT, apologized for what he called “this negligent step of mine caused trouble for my television company.”
On November 5, while broadcasting a live report on the Azerbaijani attacks on Artsakh, TRT presented the “Azerbaijan attacks the peaceful population” headline.
Since Turkey is a staunch supporter of Azerbaijan in its attacks on Artsakh, they are also engaged in heavy disinformation campaigns trying to conceal the truth from the public and speaking the truth is unacceptable. Therefore, the headline – despite not containing any false information, was deemed to be a blunder and even caused much discussion online and in the press. Some Turkish viewers even went as far as calling it TRT’s “latest embarrassment”.
Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani forces continue intense bombardments of towns and cities in Artsakh. Overnight November 5-6, Stepanakert City and the town of Shushi were heavily bombarded, with 3 civilian killed in the capital.
Reporting by Sedrak Sargsyan; Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
The air raid sirens were blaring. An old man on the main avenue, the only person in sight, told me to cross to his side of the street. “The shells usually fall on the other side,” he said.
In Stepanakert – the now nearly empty capital of the self-styled ethnic Armenian Artsakh Republic – the remaining residents spend their nights cowering in makeshift shelters that are often little more than musty cellars under aging Soviet apartment blocks. When a volley of Grad rockets crashed into the city, buildings shuddered for miles around.
Almost a month into the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, many Armenians are starting to feel the earth shift beneath their feet as Azerbaijan’s military advances annihilate old assumptions about Armenia’s military prowess and Azerbaijan’s distaste for a fight.
For nearly three decades, Armenians have controlled not just Karabakh – a mountainous district of Azerbaijan that had a degree of self-rule during the Soviet period – but also seven formerly ethnic Azeri districts surrounding Karabakh, which it won control of when the first Karabakh war ended in 1994.
In a matter of weeks, Azerbaijan has begun reversing the conquests Armenians cemented in the early 1990s, planting flags in towns that were once populated by Azerbaijanis as well as towns within the Karabakh heartland itself where Armenians had lived continually for centuries – until just days ago.
They’ve done it with an array of modern weaponry purchased from a cast of characters as diverse as Turkey, Israel, and Russia. But it’s the drones sourced in Turkey and Israel in particular that have changed the balance of power on the battlefield. No longer are the mountains of Karabakh the Armenian fortress they once were – not when the opponent rules the sky above them.
In September, none of this was imaginable for most Armenians, whose worldview revolves around a proud past and the assumption – forged in the first Karabakh war – that they are the superior warriors. Armenia’s history is indeed ancient; it can claim relics and landmarks throughout the region that stretch far beyond its modern borders. But it is Armenia’s obsession with the past that may have caused its people to misread the threatening present.
A typical conversation between a foreigner and a resident of Stepanakert will allude to the age of the churches in the region and the religion of its adversaries in Azerbaijan. Every outsider is seen as an emissary who must be charged with the urgent task of telling the Christian world that Armenians were here first and that they’re now under attack from an Islamic horde.
It’s not unreasonable for people here to see things this way. After all, the present conflict began with pogroms against Armenians in the Azerbaijani cities of Baku and Sumgayit that were a violent response to a burgeoning Karabakh-Armenian separatist movement in the late 1980s. The memory of the Ottoman slaughter of Armenians during the 1915 genocide looms large, too.
But these painful memories obscure the more recent events that motivate Azerbaijanis to fight today. More than a few people expressed the sentiment that the Azerbaijanis “have gone completely crazy,” or asked me, “Why are they doing this?” It’s as though Armenians’ past traumas have made it harder for them to perceive Azerbaijan’s grievances and its growing willingness to sacrifice not just billions of dollars of its oil wealth for an arsenal of modern weaponry but also the lives of its soldiers and civilians.
For Azerbaijan, it’s all in the service of a cause that is seen as just. Baku’s initial grievance against Armenians was the Karabakh region’s desire to be united with Armenia. But that has since been eclipsed by anger over the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azeris from their homes in both Karabakh and the surrounding districts as they came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces during the first war. Since then, it has remained a central tenet of Azerbaijani state propaganda that one day they would return to their homes, no matter the cost.
Armenians who were in cities that remained under Azerbaijani control had to flee, too. In all, some 200,000 ran, compared to some 750,000 Azerbaijanis left homeless by the first war. But it’s not just a question of scale. Armenians won the first war and therefore never had to experience the bitterness of capitulation.
It’s a bitterness that has only grown over the years, and one that Azerbaijan has never tried to hide. Every year on Armed Forces Day, a lengthy parade of state-of-the-art weaponry rolls through Baku’s Freedom Square, overseen by Azerbaijan’s unchanging President Ilham Aliyev. In 2018, armored jeeps displayed the tiny Israeli Orbiter “Kamikaze” drone, being used today to deadly effect on the battlefield. In another column, the army paraded the Russian Solntsepyok multiple rocket launcher system, which incinerates everything in an area equivalent to eight soccer fields with 24 rockets fired simultaneously. Yet somehow, Yerevan didn’t truly believe these weapons would ever be used.
“Instead of buying the most modern weapons and preparing for the worst, the politicians were building villas for themselves,” a Russian teacher in Stepanakert said of the de facto authorities in Karabakh and their political allies in mainland Armenia who were recently overthrown in a 2018 revolt against corruption. They grew complacent because they thought Russia would always defend Armenia. “They didn’t even refurbish the bomb shelters,” she complained.
The winner of that revolution, Armenia’s newly minted Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, enraged Azerbaijan further by visiting Nagorno-Karabakh in 2019 and calling openly for “reunification” with Armenia, taking things a step further than his predecessor, who had called only for its independence to be recognized to avoid unnecessarily provoking Baku.
Meanwhile, Russia has taken a hands-off approach to the conflict, mediating between the two sides as a neutral arbiter instead of involving its military on Armenia’s behalf. Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out in an interview recently that his country’s mutual defense treaty with Armenia does not extend to Nagorno-Karabakh, which is inside Azerbaijan’s territory. If the war were to spread to Armenia proper, that would of course be another matter.
Russia, the only power with real influence in both countries, has tried to float a resolution long discussed under the auspices of the so-called Minsk Group process: Armenians give up five of the seven Azerbaijani regions they captured in the first war and keep the two connecting Karabakh to mainland Armenia. But Azerbaijan has never been willing to recognize Karabakh’s independence in exchange for the land, and Armenians have never been willing to relinquish the territory without Baku’s promise to recognize their Karabakh statelet.
In every previous round of negotiations, this impasse seemed to more or less satisfy the Armenians. After all, every time a deal wasn’t reached, the status quo remained in place – a status quo in which Armenians held all the territory in question. Negotiations supported by Russia, the United States, and France never led anywhere for decades because mediators were unable to untangle this conundrum.
And so a situation that was unacceptable to Azerbaijan stood. “The [peace] process certainly prefers a status quo that doesn’t include significant loss of life occurring,” U.S. Ambassador Carey Cavanaugh, who served as a Minsk Group co-chair until 2001, told me by way of explanation. “I don’t think you can fault international mediators, negotiators or diplomats, for that.”
But now, significant loss of life is exactly what is occurring, after Azerbaijan – encouraged by Turkey – launched a surprise attack on Sept. 27. On Thursday, Putin said the conflict had already claimed a total of around 5,000 souls, offering figures that were much higher than the warring parties themselves have been willing to publish. While Azerbaijan isn’t releasing its military losses at all, Armenia has officially reported 927 deaths among its forces. Civilian fatalities have been caused mostly by the senseless shelling of population centers by both sides and have reached the 100 mark.
They’ve lost land, too. No longer do Armenians control all seven regions surrounding Karabakh. In the southern sector in particular, Azerbaijani forces are moving closer and closer to the Lachin corridor connecting Karabakh with Armenia proper. Soon they will be within artillery range of Lachin, if they are not there already. Will Baku be satisfied with just the regions that were mostly Azerbaijani before the first war? Aliyev has indicated that he will not.
“We are headed for all the territories. Every inch of the occupied lands … of course, without Shusha our mission will be half done,” he said earlier this week. Shusha, just a few miles from Stepanakert, is in the very heart of Karabakh. It was the city with the highest proportion of ethnic Azeris in the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast during the Soviet period, though the Turkic presence there goes back much further, and Azerbaijanis consider it a cultural headwater.
Aliyev has proposed that the Armenian and ethnic Azeri communities live in peace under Azerbaijani rule in the future, but it’s not a vision many Armenians believe is possible, especially after a video – verified by the Bellingcat group of digital forensic analysts as authentic – was circulated on social media depicting Azerbaijani soldiers executing two unarmed Armenian men they captured. According to Cavanaugh, the reality of an Azerbaijani reconquest would mean the displacement of 150,000 ethnic Armenians from the region. In any event, he doesn’t believe Azerbaijan would ever get that far.
“I don’t think there is a victory to be had that would come about before you would have an escalation and bring in more outside powers,” he says. A general at a funeral for fallen Armenian soldiers in Yerevan said something similar to me after venting his frustration over the drone strikes decimating his troops: “The Russians are helping us,” he whispered, without elaborating.
The question is, will that help be enough? The air defense systems sourced in Russia, built to hit fighter jets, have been little use against the swarm of miniature drones sent against Armenian forces. I saw the burned husk of one such system, an Osa design from the 1970s, presumably put out of commission by a modern guided missile designed in this century. And more direct Russian involvement threatens to pull in Turkey, Moscow’s burgeoning regional rival in theaters as diverse as Syria, Libya, and now Karabakh.
So where has Washington been throughout this crisis? It’s done little to rein in its NATO ally Turkey, which has openly backed Azerbaijan, and it’s done little to put pressure on Azerbaijan itself, which owes much of its oil wealth to U.S. backing of the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline over Russian objections in the early 2000s.
That U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration hasn’t bothered to appoint a co-chair to the Minsk Group with an ambassadorial rank might indicate just how much it cares about a war that’s unspooling in the South Caucasus in the middle of an election campaign.
America’s influence in the region could also be hampered by its president’s personal involvement in the region. In 2015, Trump told a radio host he had “a little conflict of interest,” in Turkey because of Trump Towers that were built there, “not the usual one, it’s two,” he emphasized. Similarly, in Azerbaijan, his company attempted for several years to build a Trump Hotel. Although it was never completed, the Trump Organization received millions of dollars worth of licensing fees from the powerful government-linked developer behind the project.
While the rest of the world tries to manage an unfolding global pandemic in the thrall of America’s election spectacle, the Karabakh war has seemingly been allowed to lurch on unhindered. Without outside intervention, it will unfold to become the latest war without end, added to a list of misery that already includes Ukraine, Syria and Libya.
https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/armenias-miscalculations-nagorno-karabakh?fbclid=IwAR3s8qv80EyZCg5cR99HUTIjab-i4t6uaYtnUvRxLG1hS7CiMBulJOcPn0o