14:40,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 13, ARMENPRESS. A Russian humanitarian mission has delivered 6 tons of humanitarian aid to Armenia, the Russian Center of Science and Culture in Yerevan said in a press release.
Specialists from Russia will deliver the humanitarian goods to the forcibly displaced persons of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The humanitarian goods include personal hygiene products, household chemicals and food.
14:43, 9 October 2023
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 9, ARMENPRESS. The Azerbaijani narrative that it has enclaves inside Armenia is void of any legal grounds, cartographer Ruben Galichyan has said.
Azerbaijan itself has stated in its independence declaration that it is the successor of the 1918-1920 Azerbaijan, and back then no enclaves existed.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has again falsely claimed that eight enclaves are “under Armenian occupation” which must be “liberated”.
Speaking at a press conference, Galichyan showed a 1926 Soviet map verified by the then-ministry of interior, which doesn’t show any enclaves, neither in Armenian nor Azeri territories. Furthermore, territories with an area of 1,200 square kilometers of the Armenian SSR stipulated in this map were later handed over to the Azeri SSR. The Aghavno River was the only division line between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh by that map. More adjacent areas where then handed over to Azeri control.
Moreover, a 1932 map also shows no enclaves.
These enclaves first appeared in a 1940 map, two in Tavush, one in Ararat, and Artsvashen in Azerbaijan. Although these enclaves were drawn up, no documents pertaining to these areas exist, i.e., there’s no legal ground proving their stipulation.
And despite this, in 2014 Azerbaijan published an atlas, showing enclaves located in Armenian territory, but without any note of Artsvashen.
“Two years ago, the Azeri foreign ministry said that if Armenia claims the enclaves to be its territory it should present an official document. But basically, this is a contrary approach, because since these territories are within Armenia, thus they belong to Armenia. And if Azerbaijan has any aspirations for these territories, then it is the one that should present legal grounds, which, basically, do not exist. By the way, the total area of the three enclaves located in our territory is 45 square kilometers, whereas Artsvashen alone is 44 square kilometers. Two years ago, speaking about the topic of enclaves, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan spoke about exchanging them, which is the required path for resolving the issue,” the cartographer said.
If Azerbaijan intends to sign any treaty, it must first of all return to Armenia the territories that it captured since 2021, which include around 240 square kilometers, Galichyan said.
According to the USSR general staff, the representatives of the Armenian and Azeri SSRs ratified the maps in 1960-1970s, which was the basis for the 1991 Alma-Ata declaration. But now Azerbaijan is circulating fake maps.
The territories occupied by Azerbaijan are recognized as sovereign Armenian territory by Azerbaijan itself under the 1991 declaration.
“If the Azerbaijani side is not withdrawing from individual parts of our country’s sovereign territory, then how should we negotiate? The long-term goals of Azerbaijan are clear. If they were to have enclaves in Armenian territory, they would then demand a corridor to have land connection with the enclaves, which would have the same role as the so-called Zangezur corridor. On the other hand, it is clearly visible that the Azeri enclaves are on strategically significant highways, and if these were to be connected with Azerbaijan through [extraterritorial] corridors, Armenia would lose its direct connection with its southern provinces, and the Ijevan-Noyemberyan road would be cut off in the north,” the cartographer said.
And now Azerbaijan is hinting that it wants to take over these territories by force.
He warned that any concessions would simply make Azerbaijan want more.
17:32, 4 October 2023
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 4, ARMENPRESS. Armenia’s Ambassador-at-Large Edmon Marukyan, in an interview with Al Jazeera, has presented the aftermath of Azerbaijan’s aggression in Nagorno-Karabakh. Marukyan said that Azerbaijan has subjected the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to ethnic cleansing.
[see video]
09:46, 5 October 2023
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 5, ARMENPRESS. Poland has sent humanitarian aid to Armenia for the forcibly displaced persons of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The aid consists of 10 tons of food and 200 packages of blankets.
Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland Wojciech Gerwel personally arrived to Armenia to hand over the aid.
Speaking to reporters, Gerwel expressed concern about the displacement of over 100,000 refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh.
“We want to show Poland’s support to Armenia at this difficult time,” he said.
“In response to the call by UNHCR Yerevan office, Poland is donating 200,000 euros for the urgent needs of the refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh,” Gerwel added.
100,630 forcibly displaced persons have arrived to Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Armenian government is providing accommodation and financial support to the forcibly displaced persons.
Deep in the mountains of the Karabakh range, worn thin by its grinding offensive in Ukraine, Russia's armed forces last month found themselves caught in another war.
With no tanks, trenches or warplanes, and largely hidden from international view, a contingent of roughly 2,000 of Moscow's troops played a key role in deciding the explosive end to a lesser-known conflict.
Nagorno-Karabakh — a self-governed enclave carved from a southern corner of Azerbaijan that is home to mostly ethnic Armenians — has long been trapped in the eye of a swirling geopolitical storm of duelling world powers.
The area is known for its intermittent outbreaks of heavy fighting in recent decades.
Monika and her husband Georgi fled Nagorno-Karabakh during an outbreak of war with Azerbaijan in 2020, but returned on promises made by a Russian-brokered peace agreement.
The deal established Russian peacekeepers to enforce a fragile ceasefire between the two former Soviet republics and guard the only road left linking the enclave with Armenia, the so-called Lachin corridor.
However, last week, the couple found themselves retracing the same escape route through the mountains they took three years earlier — this time once and for all.
Armenia and Azerbaijan hold competing claims to Nagorno-Karabakh, which was kept relatively under control during the Soviet Union's rule, but spilled over into conflict once it collapsed and the enclave declared independence.
This became known as the First Karabakh War, which resulted in roughly 30,000 causalities, before Russia brokered a ceasefire agreement in 1994, leaving the enclave as de-facto independent.
There have been intermittent clashes between both sides in the intervening years, with Moscow's peacekeepers often used to enforce peace in the area.
The region erupted into heavy fighting again in 2020, descending into what became known as the Second Karabakh War, after a summer of cross-border attacks.
Azerbaijan reclaimed parts of the territory it lost to Armenia decades prior and the fighting escalated before a ceasefire was brokered again by Russia after six weeks.
Since then, a fragile peace has existed between both sides.
But on September 19, Azerbaijani forces, claiming a counter-terror operation, launched a large-scale blitz on the enclave, seizing it and killing hundreds of people, including civilians.
"Russians were there on paper, but in reality they didn't protect us," said Monika, who drove for nearly two days from her village in the enclave to the Armenian border.
The separatist government's surrender a day later triggered a mass exodus of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians over the border to Armenia, fearing for their future.
Once they had reached safety, Georgi pulled over for a final glimpse at the jagged peaks on the horizon where he had spent his childhood, later working as a welder and raising a family.
"I have no words," he said, shaking his head and turning away to hide his tears.
Azerbaijan has said it wants Armenians to stay in Nagorno-Karabakh, and that it would integrate and protect those who decide to remain there. But few believe the government's claims.
Some fleeing barely had time to return home to gather their belongings before they joined a snaking queue of cars and trucks through the single road leading to neighbouring Armenia.
"Why did the world look away?" said Anahit, 78, a Nagorno-Karabakh resident who hitched a ride to the border after she was separated from her husband.
Days earlier, her brother-in-law had been killed instantly when an Azerbaijani shell detonated on his home as he tried to evacuate.
The family searched desperately for his remains but could only find one leg, blown apart from the rest of his body, which they buried near their home.
"Everywhere is covered in blood," she said.
As Azerbaijani forces bore down on Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian peacekeepers sworn to protect its residents instead appeared to stand back.
"Russian peacekeepers failed," said Kirill Krivosheev, a journalist at Russia's Kommersant newspaper.
"Russia is weaker than ever in its 'Soviet diplomacy'. Nobody relies on Russia's moral authority because of the war in Ukraine."
Moscow has military bases in Armenia and the country is deeply dependent on Russia for its economy and defence.
The two have for decades developed close cultural ties – many Armenians speak Russian as a second language.
But the perceived failure of its troops to intervene in Nagorno-Karabakh has worn thin residents' patience with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
"We trusted the Russians too much," said Anush Navasardyan, a school teacher from Nagorno-Karabakh, who had fled to an apartment in Goris, an Armenian town just over the border.
Ms Navasardyan heard shots ring out as Azerbaijani soldiers encircled her village, frantically opening the door to the stable where her four cows were kept so they might have a chance to escape too.
Mr Putin has batted away criticism that his troops in Nagorno-Karabakh allowed Azerbaijani forces to swoop in unimpeded, but analysts say their failure to protect ethnic Armenians shows the Kremlin's crumbling influence in the region.
Azerbaijan has also rejected Moscow's role in the mass exodus of Armenians from the enclave, as well as accusations of ethnic cleansing.
"It's not Russia's business to interfere," said Esmira Jafarova, a former advisor to Azerbaijan's government on international issues.
"These people [Armenian refugees] are leaving because they are not sure about the future. It's not the result of any kind of harassment or forceful action on the part of Azerbaijan."
But the accounts of people fleeing the territory tell a vastly different story, said Anoush Baghdassarian, a human rights lawyer working for the Center for Truth and Justice, an Armenian organisation based in the capital Yerevan.
"This is ethnic cleansing. It's important to demonstrate the forced displacement of these people," she said.
For days, Ms Baghdassarian stood in the centre of Goris' main square, interviewing some of the thousands of refugees pouring over the border from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Her recorded testimonies might one day be used in an international tribunal, she added.
The Azerbaijani seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh has shaken residents of Armenian towns and villages like Goris, who fear it could embolden Azerbaijan to push further into the country.
"Goris is totally under the watch of the enemy," said Aram Musakhanyan, a school teacher, who with others in the town formed a security committee partly to help prepare residents for possible invasion.
"Goris in particular and the region in general is located in such a position that with modern weapons, we could be cut off from the rest of Armenia within hours."
Azerbaijan's authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev has touted the idea of creating a land corridor linking Azerbaijan to its landlocked Nakhchivan enclave, on the other side of Armenia.
Peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia are scheduled on Thursday in Spain as leaders of the two countries meet on neutral ground in the hopes of hashing out another peace agreement.
"Everyone is tired of war," said Ms Jafarova.
"So we're looking forward to seeing that Armenia will be on the same page as Azerbaijan and finally we can move forward."
The same is too late for the separatist leaders in Nagorno-Karabakh, whose enclave has been dissolved and most of its people driven from their homes.
Its president, Samvel Shakhramanyan, announced last week he had ordered the dismantling of the breakaway state's institutions by the end of the year.
Its de-facto capital, Stepanakert, is like a scene from a zombie apocalypse – its streets deserted and cars and buildings suddenly abandoned.
Former residents say the events of the past few weeks have taught them a bitter lesson.
"We are completely alone," said Monika.
"We need the time to digest what has happened."
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The exodus of ethnic Armenians this week from the region known as Nagorno-Karabakh has been a vivid and shocking tableau of fear and misery. Roads are jammed with cars lumbering with heavy loads, waiting for hours in traffic jams. People sit amid mounds of hastily packed luggage.
As of Thursday, more than 78,300 people had left the breakaway region for Armenia. That’s a huge number — more than half of the population of the region that is located entirely within Azerbaijan.
Still, it’s not the largest displacement of civilians in three decades of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
After ethnic Armenian forces secured control of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territories in 1994, refugee organizations estimated that some 900,000 people had fled to Azerbaijan and 300,000 to Armenia.
When war broke out again in 2020 and Azerbaijan seized more territory, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said 90,000 had gone to Armenia and 40,000 to Azerbaijan.
Those figures underline the fierce animosity between the two countries, and they raise questions about the region’s future.
Nagorno-Karabakh, with a population of about 120,000, is a mountainous, ethnic Armenian region inside Azerbaijan in the southern Caucasus Mountains.
When both Azerbaijan and Armenia were part of the Soviet Union, the region was designated as an autonomous republic, but as Moscow’s central control of far-flung regions deteriorated, a movement arose in Nagorno-Karabakh for incorporation into Armenia.
Tensions burst into violence in 1988 when more than 30 — some say as many as 200 — ethnic Armenians were killed in a pogrom in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait. Armenians fled, as did many ethnic Azeris who lived in Armenia. When a full-scale war broke out, the numbers soared. That first war lasted until 1994.
Azerbaijan regained control of parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and large swaths of adjacent territory held by Armenians in a six-week war in 2020, driving out tens of thousands of Armenians that the government in Baku declared to have settled illegally.
Last week, Azerbaijan launched a blitz that forced the capitulation of Nagorno-Karabakh’s separatist forces and government. On Thursday, the separatist authorities agreed to disband by the end of this year.
The events put the region’s ethnic Armenians on the move out of the territory.
Nagorno-Karabakh and the territory around it have deep cultural and religious significance for Christian Armenians and predominantly Muslim Azeris, and each group denounces the other for alleged efforts to destroy or desecrate monuments and relics.
Armenians were deeply angered by recent video that purportedly showed an Azerbaijani soldier firing at a monastery in the region. Azeris have seethed with resentment at Armenians’ wholesale pillaging of the once-sizable city of Aghdam and the use of its mosque as a cattle barn.
A Russian peacekeeping force of about 2,000 was deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh under an armistice that ended the 2020 war. But its inaction in the latest Azerbaijani offensive probably was a key factor in the separatists’ quick decision to give in.
In December, Azerbaijan began blocking the only road leading from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.
Armenians bitterly criticized the peacekeepers for failing to follow their mandate to keep the road open. The blockade caused severe food and medicine shortages in Nagorno-Karabakh. International organizations and governments called repeatedly for Baku to lift the blockade.
Russia, which is fighting a war in Ukraine, seems to be unable or unwilling to take action to keep the road open. That appears to have persuaded the separatists that they would get no support when Azerbaijan launched its blitz.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s forces were small and poorly supplied in comparison with those of Azerbaijan, thanks to the country’s surging oil revenues and support from Turkey.
WHAT WILL THE FUTURE HOLD?
Under last week’s cease-fire, Azerbaijan will “reintegrate” Nagorno-Karabakh, but the terms for that are unclear. Baku repeatedly has promised that the rights of ethnic Armenians will be observed if they stay in the region as Azerbaijani citizens.
That promise appears to have reassured almost no one. Although Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said last week that he saw no immediate need for Armenians to leave, on Thursday he said he expected that none would be left in Nagorno-Karabakh within a few days.
Ethnic Armenians in the region do not trust Azerbaijan to treat them fairly and humanely or grant them their language, religion and culture.
Without an international peacekeeping or police force in the region, ethnic violence would be almost certain to flare.
17:56,
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 25, ARMENPRESS. 6,650 forcibly displaced people entered Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh as of 17:00, September 25, the Armenian government said in a statement.
The government is providing accommodation to everyone in need.
The needs assessment is ongoing.
11:58,
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS. The Azerbaijani authorities have generated more disinformation falsely accusing the Armenian military of opening cross-border fire, the Armenian Ministry of Defense warned Tuesday.
“The statement disseminated by the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan as if on September 12, from 9:45 a.m. to 10 a.m., the Armenian Armed Forces units opened fire at the Azerbaijani combat outposts in the southwestern part of the border, does not correspond to reality,” the Armenian Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
16:13, 8 September 2023
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 8, ARMENPRESS. Bazoomq, the space research lab based in Yerevan, Armenia, that is currently developing the country’s first indigenous satellite, has been officially licensed as a space operator.
Minister of High-Tech Industry Robert Khachatryan personally awarded the license to carry out space activities to the Bazoomq staff on Friday.
“This is a significant event for us because you are the first private company [in Armenia] to receive the license to carry out space activities,” Khachatryan said, adding that the Armenian government attaches importance to the development of the sector.
The first Armenian indigenous CubeSat satellite will be sent into orbit in November.
The CubeSat, named Hayasat-1, is being developed by Bazoomq, a non-profit space research lab based in Yerevan, Armenia.
Bazoomq Space Research Lab’s mission is to establish and continuously develop capabilities and skills for cutting-edge space research, education and startups in and for Armenia.
Bazoomq Co-founder, board member & CTO Hayk Martirosyan told ARMENPRESS tech correspondent Karine Terteryan earlier on September 7 that Hayasat-1’s testing will be completed in September and the satellite will be launched into space on board the Space X Falcon 9 in late November.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday vowed to launch a new diplomatic initiative to up pressure on Azerbaijan over its blockade of Armenian-controlled areas of Nagorno-Karabakh which has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis.
Without giving details on the initiative, he told a conference of French ambassadors that he would hold talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in the coming days.
"We will demand full respect for the Lachin humanitarian corridor and we will again launch a diplomatic initiative internationally to increase pressure on this issue," he said.
Armenia has urged the UN Security Council to hold a crisis meeting on Nagorno-Karabakh, citing a deteriorating humanitarian situation and accusing Azerbaijan of blocking supplies to the contested region.
The Caucasus neighbours have been locked in a dispute over the enclave — internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan — since the 1980s and fought two wars over the territory.
The second, in 2020, saw the defeat of Armenian forces and significant territorial gains for Azerbaijan.
For months, Yerevan has accused Baku of stopping traffic through the Lachin corridor — a short, mountainous road linking Armenia to settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh still populated by Armenians after the latest conflict.
Mher Margaryan, Armenia's permanent representative to the UN, warned earlier this month that the population of Nagorno-Karabakh stands on the verge "of a veritable humanitarian catastrophe" due to shortages of food, medicines and energy.
Azerbaijan's ambassador to France Leyla Abdullayeva, in a letter to French local elected representatives, accused Armenia of "worsening the security situation in the region by misuing the Lachin route for the transfer of mines and illegal armed forces on Azerbaijan's territory".
That was why Azerbaijan had set up a check point on the Lachin route, she said in the letter, a copy of which was seen by AFP on Monday.
She also complained that some French elected representatives had accompanied a humanitarian convoy for Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh which she said had led to her country being "demonised" with claims it had created a humanitarian disaster based on "absolutely unfounded allegations".
The two neighbours have been unable to reach a lasting peace settlement despite mediation efforts by the European Union, United States and Russia.
In the latest 2020 conflict, Azerbaijan regained control of key areas of Karabakh including the culturally significant city of Shusha. But other parts of the region, including the main city of Stepanakert, remain in the control of Armenian separatists.
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