10:30,
YEREVAN, JANUARY 30, ARMENPRESS. Armenian men’s national basketball team head coach Rex Kalamian has been appointed as assistant coach for the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, the Basketball Federation of Armenia said in a statement.
Kalamian will maintain his position in Armenia.
On February 22, Armenia will play against Austria in the first-round qualifiers for the 2027 FIBA Basketball World Cup.
15:41,
YEREVAN, JANUARY 30, ARMENPRESS. A Member of Parliament has drafted legislation seeking to introduce airtime restrictions for mafia films and series citing what he describes as 'negative impact' of such movies on children.
Civil Contract Party MP Artur Hovhannisyan wants to ban the broadcasting of ‘films and series promoting criminal subculture” from 06:00 until 00:00.
At a committee hearing in parliament, the lawmaker argued that the broadcasting of such films must be restricted as much as the law allows it.
He said that such films have a “negative impact” on minors.
Such films, according to the MP, contain ‘vulgarity and profanity’ and reject moral norms and promote ‘indecent lifestyle, devalue the role of education and discipline’ and lead to the ‘glorification’ of criminal lifestyle.
By Areg Danagoulian |
The world is currently in the process of reevaluating its past rejection of nuclear power and is increasingly starting to view it as a reliable source of power that allows for greater energy security. This is at least in part due to the energy crisis that befell Europe after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, vindicating past worries that over-reliance on fossil fuels from autocratic regimes has made the Western countries vulnerable to political blackmail.
It is now clear that Western use of natural gas and petroleum from aggressive dictatorships—which use cash flows from oil and gas sales to reinforce and expand their hold on power—has backfired badly. In this context, the experience of Armenia—a small country that draws 40 percent of its energy from nuclear power—is instructive, showing how nuclear power can be instrumental in building societal reliance and political stability.
Living in the dark cold. It is the winter of 1992–1993. As I climb the dark stairs in a freezing-cold Soviet apartment building in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia where my family and I live, the water from the two full buckets I carry is splashing down my legs and freezing on the stairs. My sister Shooshan and I, 14 and 15, are carrying water up to our 11th-floor apartment. The water to our apartment shut off weeks ago, and we get at most one hour of electricity each day. I estimate that we need exactly seven gallons of water, if we are careful, for our basic daily needs. So, we repeat the trip every day. During the precious hour when we do get electricity, my mother rushes to the kitchen to cook food for the next 24 hours. I run to the bakery, where I stand in a long queue to buy the half pound of bread that the state has rationed for each one of us.
The daily routine, which goes on for the whole winter, is exhausting. But it is also empowering. As teenagers we feel that we are stronger than the disastrous conditions inflicted on us by the combination of the Soviet collapse, the Nagorno-Karabakh war, and the ensuing severe energy crisis.
The reasons that my sister and I—and the thousands of other Armenian teenagers like us—had to lug water and plan their lives around the one hour of electricity during that cruel winter go back to the turbulent events that shook Armenia during the preceding decades.
Map of Armenia. Credit: The World Factbook 2021. Central Intelligence Agency.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union—which Armenia was part of—rapidly expanded its fleet of nuclear reactors to support its growing industrial energy needs. As a result, two pressurized water reactors (PWR) of the Soviet VVER-440 type were built in the Armenian town of Metsamor, about 30 kilometers west of Yerevan. Started in 1977 and 1980, respectively, the two reactors quickly covered more than half of the energy needs of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. (The remainder of the electricity was generated by Armenia’s hydroelectric stations and gas-fired power plants.) The Armenia of the 1980s was a tiny but prosperous Soviet republic that prided itself in a highly educated labor force, an array of scientific institutes, and a vibrant electronics industry that produced some of the early Soviet computer mainframe designs.
A series of violent events during the collapse of the Soviet Union would dramatically alter the Armenian dream.
Chernobyl. On April 26, 1986, one of the Soviet-designed, graphite-moderated RBMK reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant underwent a catastrophic power excursion that ripped the reactor open. The explosion and fire that followed propelled an enormous amount of radioactive matter into the open atmosphere leading to what is now known as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, with widespread radioactive contamination, hundreds of deaths from acute radiation poisoning, and likely thousands of additional deaths due to radiation-induced cancers in the months and years that followed.
The Chernobyl accident resonated worldwide, dramatically undermining public trust in nuclear power as a safe source of energy. The public perception of danger from nuclear power was magnified by the outrageous lies that the Soviet leadership spread about the disaster, the obvious incompetence and irresponsibility of the Soviet nuclear designers who built and operated the Chernobyl reactor, and the poorly executed cleanup efforts which were compounded by miscalculations and gross mistakes.
Overnight, citizens across the Soviet Union and beyond went from a blissful ignorance about radiation to an understandable—yet irrational—fear of anything radiation-related. People in Armenia, despite living more than 2,000 kilometers away from Chernobyl, started perceiving radioactive threats everywhere, often attributing many of their common ailments to radiation. Physicists, like my parents, tried to explain what radiation is and how natural doses of radiation are not dangerous. But their advice was sometimes met with hostility: Weren’t the builders of Chernobyl also scientists?
In one chilling conversation that I witnessed at a dinner party, one of the guests told my father only half in jest, “You physicists… you should all be shot!” To paraphrase Valery Legasov’s eponymous character from HBO’s five-part mini-series “Chernobyl”: The danger of the lies is not that we mistake them for the truth, but that when enough lies are told we lose hope in the truth and start believing in stories. (Legasov was a Soviet chemist who actively worked on the causes and consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. Concerned by the lack of nuclear safety in the Soviet nuclear industry, he died by suicide on April 27, 1988.)
An earthquake, the Soviet collapse, and war. In December 1988, the devastating earthquake of Spitak killed 50,000 people—a harrowing 2 percent of Armenia’s population—and destroyed most of the country’s infrastructure. The two VVER-440 reactors at Metsamor were suddenly in the public eye. Would another earthquake rip them open and turn Armenia’s heartland, where half of Armenia’s population lived, into a Chernobyl-like radioactive wasteland?
To be clear, the PWRs at Metsamor are safer than the shoddily designed, graphite-moderated reactors at Chernobyl. Metsamor’s Soviet reactor design is close to the standard PWR designs that are still the most common reactor technology used in Western countries. And the buildings and the reactor structures were reinforced to account for Armenia’s seismic activity. But none of that mattered. After the Soviet government’s grotesque lies about the Chernobyl disaster, the official assurances that the Metsamor reactors were safe did not convince many. Legasov’s intuition was right: The pursuit for truth was replaced with belief in conspiratorial rumors. An environmentalist movement sprang up, calling for the shutdown of the Metsamor reactors. The authorities backed down, and the two reactors were turned off on February 25 and March 18, 1989.
Shortly after the shutdown, the Soviet Union started to crack, finally collapsing in 1991. In neighboring Azerbaijan, an Armenian minority living in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region, feeling marginalized and discriminated against, had long been fighting to protect their civil rights. With the weakening of Soviet power, the protest movement turned into demands for secession from Azerbaijan. The response in Azerbaijan was a series of brutal anti-Armenian pogroms in the cities of Sumgait and Baku that killed hundreds of Armenian civilians and forced about 300,000 others to flee the country. Fearing retaliation, the Azeri civilians living in Armenia fled en masse to Azerbaijan.
A relatively peaceful political disagreement had suddenly turned into a violent conflict, with Azerbaijan’s pogroms against Armenians escalating to a total war against the Armenian people of Nagorno-Karabakh. As the Armenian government supported the Nagorno-Karabakh secessionists, Azerbaijan retaliated by shutting off some of the natural gas pipelines that led to Armenia. In a sense, Azerbaijan’s authorities did to Armenia what Russian President Vladimir Putin is now doing to Western European countries that support Ukraine’s war effort. With its nuclear reactors and natural gas supply shut down, Armenia was left with a reduced capacity to generate electricity.
Then came the winter of 1992–1993. Mountain rivers froze, hydroelectric dams dried up, and suddenly hydropower too was nearly gone. Armenia was getting barely a trickle of electricity. What followed is a period now known in Armenia as “tsurt u mut tariner,” literally the cold and dark years: severe shortages of electricity, freezing concrete apartment complexes, closed schools, and many other disruptions. The economy collapsed, with Armenia’s gross domestic product contracting by an estimated 50 to 80 percent between 1990 and 1993. Then, a massive exodus followed, shrinking Armenia’s population by a quarter in just a few years.
Nuclear power revival. The Armenian public quickly realized that, by abandoning nuclear power, it had forfeited the country’s energy independence. That vulnerability was—and still is—very effectively leveraged by its arch-enemy Azerbaijan. Was it too late to restore nuclear power?
Understanding their mistake, the Armenian authorities re-evaluated their past decision. The choice was stark: Either indulge in exaggerated fears of radiation and face unpredictable consequences, or sober up and accept nuclear power as a lesser evil. Ultimately the government chose the sober option. But rather than rushing headfirst to hastily restart the Metsamor nuclear power plant, the authorities decided to make significant safety improvements to the reactors.
One of the Metsamor reactors finally restarted on November 5, 1995, just before the winter season. The desperately needed 400 megawatts flowed again into the small country’s languishing power grid. Almost overnight, lights were turned on, water pumps worked again, and industries revved up to capacity. Children like my sister and I stopped their exhausting routine and Armenia became a net exporter of electricity.
Over the 13 years that followed, Armenia’s economy grew by an unprecedented 700 percent. The difficult decision to restore nuclear power had saved Armenia and had put it on a path of development. In 2020, about 35 percent of electricity generated in Armenia came from nuclear, 25 percent came from renewables (primarily hydropower), and the remaining 40 percent from fossil fuels. (In 2021, the share of nuclear power temporarily dropped to 26 percent because the Metsamor reactor was shut down longer than usual to perform a thermal annealing of the pressure vessel, a maintenance method aimed at managing aging effects.)
Despite its important contribution to the electricity mix, the nuclear power plant at Metsamor is not without problems. Mainly, like most Soviet-era PWRs, the reactor does not have the external containment building that is common with Western designs. It is also an aging machine. Because of Armenia’s growing energy needs, the Metsamor reactor has been issued multiple lifetime extensions. Based on current plans, Metsamor’s VVER-440 reactor will shut down permanently by 2036. Meanwhile the Armenian government has been busy exploring replacement alternatives, such as possibly US-built small modular reactors (SMRs), seen as a viable replacement. Armenian officials have also entered in discussions with Russia about the possibility of replacing the Soviet-era VVER-440 reactor with the much larger and more modern Russian VVER-1200 design. While the US option is not easy—mainly because of the lack of readiness of most SMR designs—the Russian option is particularly fraught. Armenia is reluctant to further increase its energy dependence on Russia, given Putin’s campaign of neo-Soviet expansionism. This is further exacerbated by the technical and economic difficulty of hosting a 1200-megawatt electric VVER-1200 unit on a grid that on average consumes only about 1,000 megawatts.
Survival in the shadow of petro-dictatorship. In recent years, social scientists have studied the negative impacts of nuclear power on underprivileged communities, such as the effects of uranium mining on indigenous populations. These studies are important for understanding the social cost of this resource. However very rarely have scholars studied the positive impact that nuclear power has had in helping the victims of oppression.
Most of the three million inhabitants in Armenia trace their lineage to the survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Most live near the border with the perpetrator state of Turkey, which to this day refuses to acknowledge its crime and in the recent past has actively helped Azerbaijan. Since 1993, Azerbaijan has been ruled by the Aliyev dynasty with an iron fist, strengthened by the cash flows from the export of the country’s large hydrocarbon reserves to Western countries. To further strengthen his hold on power, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (son of Heydar Aliyev who held power in Azerbaijan for several decades) has tapped into Azerbaijanis’ trauma from the 1990s by demonizing Armenians and blaming all of Azerbaijan’s ill on this minority.
Since he took power in 2003, the regime of Aliyev son has been accused of curtailing free speech and ethnic cleansing of Armenians, whereas Azerbaijan’s armed forces have been busy mounting a campaign of widespread cultural erasure. These decades of threats culminated in last September with a swift military attack on the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which in just one week brought the 3,000-year-old indigenous Armenian presence there effectively to an end. The situation currently is so severe that Luis Moreno Ocampo, a former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has warned that a new genocide may be underway.
Armenians, whose newly budding democracy is under constant threat from the various authoritarian governments in the region, cannot achieve cultural and existential security if they do not have a state that ensures their security. And that includes energy security, to which nuclear power generation is key. Of course, Azerbaijan deserves to have a democratic government, too, something that is being hindered by the Western countries’ over-reliance on fossil fuel exports.
The lessons of small nations. When it comes to understanding the value of nuclear energy, studies tend to focus on the big nuclear powers such as the United States, China, and Russia. They rarely study the experiences of small countries like Armenia. Still, the study of these “insignificant” players is important in terms of understanding the mistakes made, successes achieved, and lessons learned, which can be relevant for the “big” players as well. In a telling example, Germany is learning the hard way about the dangers of complacency when it comes to choosing between nuclear energy and fossil fuels for its energy mix: Over the last 20 years, German politicians preferred to shut down their “scary”—but nonetheless safe—nuclear power plants and increase their potentially destabilizing—but considered harmless—reliance on Russia’s natural gas. Had German policymakers studied Armenia’s experience of the 1990s, they could probably have avoided the energy crisis the country is currently experiencing.
Sadly, it’s hard to tell whether European leaders have learned anything from Armenia’s struggle for energy security. In a now much-criticized statement from 2022, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called Azerbaijan’s dictator Ilham Aliyev “a reliable partner.” This gesture is now believed to have, at least partly, emboldened the Aliyev regime’s brutality toward the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. At least for now, it is as if Europe is merely switching dictators while maintaining the same dependence on fossil fuels.
Only a full reckoning by Western countries of their over-reliance on fossil fuels can put an end to the authoritarian regimes that exist only because of their hydrocarbon exports. Such a reckoning, along with the development of renewable energy and nuclear power, would lead to net gains for the climate and the environment. It would also help strengthen liberal democracies that are being unprecedently threatened.
19:57,
Tuesday,
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BURBANK MAYOR NICK SCHULTZ ANNOUNCES ENDORSEMENT,
ACCELERATING KBUSHYAN’S MOMENTUM FOR LA CITY COUNCIL DISTRICT 2
Los Angeles — Today, CA State Commissioner and small business owner Sam Kbushyan proudly announced the endorsement of Burbank Mayor Nick Schultz. Mayor Schultz is the frontrunner for the California Assembly to represent District 44.
Schultz said, ‘I am pleased to endorse Sam Kbushyan for LA City Council District 2. I know Sam to be a man of integrity, empathy, and exceptional leadership, and he’ll be a strong champion for our community at City Hall.’
Kbushyan welcomed the endorsement, stating, ‘I’m grateful and honored to have Nick’s endorsement, not only as the Mayor of Burbank but as someone who, like me, has dedicated his entire professional career to public service. I proudly endorsed Nick for CA State Assembly because of his impeccable character, his admirable work as an attorney, and his service as a Burbank Councilmember since 2020. '
He added, ‘Our districts overlap in some places, and I know that Nick and I will make a great team. Los Angeles faces significant challenges, but there are also many opportunities for growth, synergistic partnerships, and community cohesion. I look forward to working with Nick for years to come.’
About Mayor Nick Schultz
Nick has spent his entire professional career in public service. He currently serves as a Deputy Attorney General with the Special Prosecutions Section of the Attorney General’s Office with the California Department of Justice, where he works with local, state, and federal law enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute criminal cases primarily related to public corruption, officer involved shootings, human trafficking, mortgage fraud, tax evasion, and other forms of financial fraud.
In this role, Nick helped lead the charge to create the first-of-its-kind Post-Conviction Review Unit at the Department of Justice, which will review claims of innocence and wrongful conviction for any cases handled by the State. This will be the first-time individuals making claims of wrongful convictions will be able to have their voices heard.
Nick personally understands the hardships the average Californians find themselves in every day. He was largely raised by a single mother who worked to give him every available opportunity to succeed; he is the first person in his working-class family to attend and graduate from college.
VoteNickSchultz.com
About Sam Kbushyan
Sam Kbushyan serves as a Commissioner for the California State Board and has long been a committed public servant, community pillar, and advocate for civil rights. He was first appointed to the California State Respiratory Care Board in 2017, and his dedication led to his reappointment for another term in 2022.
As the Principal of the public affairs firm SKG, Sam is deeply committed to fostering community growth, promoting business advocacy, ensuring civic participation, and nurturing symbiotic partnerships. Appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Sam is integral to the Mayor’s Advisory Transition Team. His unwavering commitment to public affairs, civic participation, and social entrepreneurship made him a prime choice for Mayor Bass.
Active in numerous preeminent community organizations, Sam also serves on the board of the LA Community Alliance. In this role, he creates strategic alliances and fosters cooperation among various community stakeholders. Previously the Executive Director of the Immigrants Charitable Foundation, Sam’s impact is wide-reaching.
Sam’s expertise was also evident in his tenure as a SEIU Local 434b labor union organizer. Here, he formulated strategies that empowered long-term healthcare workers to advocate for improved wages, work conditions, and healthcare accessibility. He successfully mobilized over 30,000 healthcare providers through advocacy initiatives, collective bargaining, and educational programs for union members.
As a member of the East Hollywood Chamber of Commerce board, Sam has fervently advocated for small businesses, addressing their unique challenges regarding the local economy and sustainability.
Sam’s dedication traces back to his academic years. He served as the Student Body President at Los Angeles Valley College and later assumed the role of Commissioner of Political Affairs at California State University Los Angeles.
Stepping into the political arena as a candidate, Sam has set clear priorities: combating homelessness, addressing housing shortages and related challenges, ensuring public safety, fighting government corruption, promoting economic development across all income levels, creating a sustainable immigration framework, and devising efficient public transportation solutions.
Sam pursued political science at California State University Los Angeles and earned his B.A. He furthered his education with a graduate degree from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. He shares his life in Valley Glen, CA, with his wife, Suzanna, and their three children: Maria, David, and Bella.
SamForCD2.com
The first structural steel beams installed at the Armenian American Museum construction site
GLENDALE—The Armenian American Museum and Cultural Center of California celebrated an exciting milestone with the installation of the first structural steel beams at the construction site of the highly anticipated cultural and educational center.
“We are thrilled to witness the structure of the museum rising and taking shape,” stated Executive Vice Chairman Zaven Kazazian. “We are grateful for our community’s unwavering support to build a landmark center that will advance education, preservation, and enrichment for future generations.”
The one-of-a-kind institution is currently under construction in the museum campus at Glendale Central Park. The first phase of construction featuring the museum parking garage and building foundation has been completed. The second phase of construction featuring the two-level 50,820 square foot museum building superstructure is currently underway.
The Armenian American Museum construction site The first steal beams installed at Armenian American Museum construction site
PNG Builders, the General Contractor for the museum project, contracted with Muhlhauser Steel as the structural steel subcontractor following a competitive bidding process. Muhlhauser Steel is based in Southern California and brings more than four decades of experience with commercial, industrial, educational, and entertainment facility projects.
The mission of the museum is to promote understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Armenian American experience. The museum will offer a wide range of public programming through the Permanent Exhibition, Temporary Exhibitions, Auditorium, Learning Center, Demonstration Kitchen, Archives Center, and more.
Learn more about the museum project online.
"Armenian Genocide Looted Art and Restitution" conference graphic
The Armenian Genocide Research Program within The Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA presents a conference titled, “Armenian Genocide Looted Art and Restitution.” The event will be held in the UCLA Fowler Museum’s Harry and Yvonne Lenart Auditorium on Saturday, February 10 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Pacific Time).
This event is a follow-up to a March 2023 conference at UCLA titled, “What’s Next?: Armenian Genocide Restitution in the Post-Recognition Era,” which explored the possibilities of creating an Armenian Genocide reparations movement post-recognition by President Biden and Congress in 2021.
In response to directives stemming from the March conference, during Summer 2023, the AGRP spearheaded the Armenian Genocide Looted Art Research Project (AGLARP), a multidisciplinary, collaborative research project aimed at (1) fostering research on Armenian art, cultural heritage, and other cultural objects that were looted, destroyed, or transferred in conjunction with the Armenian Genocide; and (2) engaging in critical thinking and action on the many dimensions of justice, dialogue, restitution, and repair regarding the losses of Armenian culture arising from the Armenian Genocide. The project was conducted under the academic leadership of Art History Professor Heghnar Watenpaugh of University of California, Davis, and Law Professor Michael Bazyler of Chapman University Fowler School of Law.
The program will consist of a documentary screening (in-person audience only), discussions of the AGLARP’s summer research findings, and a roundtable to consider what the pursuit of restitution looks like for both past and present threats to cultural heritage objects and sites, as well as what lies next for the AGLARP.
The conference will feature Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat as the Keynote Speaker, as well as special remarks by Law Professor Lauren Fielder, investigative researcher Simon Maghakyan, and world-renowned lawyer and genealogist E. Randol Schoenberg.
The conference will be held in the UCLA Fowler Museum’s Harry and Yvonne Lenart Auditorium on Saturday, February 10, 2023. Pre-registration is required for this hybrid event, which will also offer remote online participation via Zoom. Registration begins at 9:30 AM and the program starts at 10:00 AM (Pacific Time). Lunch and refreshments will be provided for in-person participants.
For event details and to register for in-person attendance or remote participation, visit the event website.
This conference is co-sponsored by the Fowler Museum at UCLA, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College, the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA, and the Institute for Transnational Law at The University of Texas at Austin School of Law.
The Armenian Genocide Research Program was established within The Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA in early 2022. Led by Dr. Taner Akçam, the AGRP engages in research and scholarly activities pertaining to the study of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire during the early 20th century.
Reforms are being proposed to Armenia's Constitution
Official Azerbaijan is insisting that it has raised concerns about Armenia’s Constitution at the onset of talks, as official Baku said that Armenia must end its disregard toward Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity through its laws and Constitution.
Azerbaijan made the statement when it rejected a proposal from Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who during a speech on Armenian Armed Forces Day on Sunday, called for a “nonaggression pact” between the two countries.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aykhan Hajizadeh accused Pashinyan of diverting the focus from the peace treaty and normalization of relations between the two governments.
“Despite the fact that from the very beginning of the discussion on the draft agreement, Azerbaijan has called on Armenia to put an end to the encroachments on the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan, which are reflected in the [Armenia’s] Constitution, various laws and decisions, in the applications addressed to various international courts after the 44-day war, in official international organizations, Armenia has not yet taken any practical steps in this direction,” Hajizadeh said in a statement issued Monday in response to Pashinyan’s remarks.
“It is known that over the past 30 years, Armenia has grossly violated the international treaties recognizing our territorial integrity and sovereignty, carried out aggression against Azerbaijan, during the occupation of our territories, it hid most of its military equipment from international control mechanisms, illegally deploying them on the territory of our country,” Hajizadeh added.
The Azerbaijani diplomat described the assurances that Yerevan is serious about the peace process as political speculation. Hajizade pointed to a statement made by Pashinyan on Sunday regarding the purchase of weapons and the expansion of the military industrial complex.
“Such biased statements hinder the further development and progress of the region based on the principles of international law,” said the statement, asserting that Azerbaijan will continue its steadfast efforts for peace and expects Armenia to take adequate steps not by word, but by deed.
Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanyan attempted to counter Hajiyev’s statements on Tuesday, saying that the Constitution is an internal and domestic issue for Armenia and other countries should not encroach on that right.
“Constitutional changes are our internal problem, and it is the sovereign right of each state, and I think it is pointless to try to find parallels here,” Kostanyan told Armenia’s Public Television, but did not address whether Azerbaijan had insisted on a change to Armenia’s Constitution at the onset of the peace negotiations, which have been ongoing for several years.
The issue of amending — or reforming — Armenia’s Constitution has gained more momentum ever since Pashinyan called for a new Constitution earlier this month, saying that the new document must reflect the current geopolitical realities.
The preamble of the current Constitution includes references to Armenia’s Declaration of Independence, which calls for the unification of Artsakh with Armenia. In August, Pashinyan chose the anniversary of the declaration to voice his discontent with the document.
All this has raised more accusations from opposition forces, which have accused Pashinyan of kowtowing to Baku when calling for a new Constitution.
12:52,
YEREVAN, JANUARY 31, ARMENPRESS. Armenia is the 7th safest country in the world, according to NUMBEO.
The analytical platform’s Crime Rate and Safety Index by Country report has ranked Armenia 7th out of 146 countries, while the city of Yerevan is 15th out of 329 cities.
Armenia and its capital city Yerevan are the safest countries among all CIS countries and cities, according to NUMBEO.
On January 11, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan spoke about the figures during a with police officials.
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