Author: Emil Lazarian

                                        Friday, 


Armenian PM Says ‘State Interests’ Will Matter In Decision On CSTO Membership


Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (file photo)


Armenia will decide on whether to quit the Collective Security Treaty 
Organization (CSTO) or not “based on its own state interests,” Prime Minister 
Nikol Pashinian said on Friday, answering a question from the public on why 
Yerevan still continues to be a member of the Russia-led defense bloc.

“We will focus on the state interests of Armenia, and if we have made or haven’t 
made any decision at this moment, our benchmark is the state interest of 
Armenia,” he said during almost a nine-hour-long live question-and-answer TV 
broadcast.

“At the moment, our records show that the CSTO’s de-facto actions or inaction do 
not address its obligations towards the Republic of Armenia, that is, in this 
sense, the CSTO’s actions are not in line with Armenia’s interests. And we raise 
this issue in a transparent way,” Pashinian added.

The Pashinian government has long criticized the CSTO for its “failure to 
respond to the security challenges” facing Armenia.

Armenia had appealed to the CSTO for military assistance in September 2022 
following two-day deadly border clashes with Azerbaijan that Yerevan said 
stemmed from Baku’s aggression against sovereign Armenian territory.

The Russia-led bloc stopped short of calling Azerbaijan the aggressor and 
effectively refused to back Armenia militarily, while agreeing to consider only 
sending an observation mission to the South Caucasus country.

Armenia later declined such a mission, saying that before it could be carried 
out the CSTO needed to give a clear political assessment of what Yerevan had 
described as Azerbaijan’s aggression and occupation of sovereign Armenian 
territory.

Speculation about Armenia’s possible withdrawal from the CSTO was stoked by 
Pashinian’s most recent decision not to attend the organization’s November 23 
summit in Minsk, Belarus, which drew criticism from Moscow.

Political analyst Areg Kochinian said Pashinian’s step and his remarks on Friday 
were not yet “withdrawal” from the CSTO, but rather a preparation for it.

“One should not overestimate this boycott like some do in the media, calling it 
an effective withdrawal from the CSTO. But, of course, this is essentially the 
way towards change, the way of preparation for making some qualitative changes 
in the security architecture of Armenia to quit the CSTO,” the analyst said.




Nagorno-Karabakh Leader Testifies In 2020 War Probe


Leader of Nagorno-Karabakh Samvel Shahramanian (file photo)


Samvel Shahramanian, the leader of Nagorno-Karabakh, testified in front of an 
Armenian parliament commission probing the 2020 war that met on Friday behind 
closed doors to hear the unrecognized republic’s last president.

Andranik Kocharian, the head of the commission, said that, among other things, 
during his three-hour-long testimony Shahramanian also shed light on some of the 
events that followed Azerbaijan’s latest military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh 
on September 19-20 that led to the exodus of more than 100,000 Armenians, the 
region’s virtually entire Armenian population, to Armenia.

Shahramanian, who was elected president by Nagorno-Karabakh’s parliament on 
September 9, only ten days before Azerbaijan’s offensive, signed a decree on 
September 28 disbanding the “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic” from January 1, 2024, 
which he later hinted was done under pressure from Azerbaijan to allow a safe 
escape for the local ethnic Armenian population to Armenia.

Andranik Kocharian

Kocharian said that Shahramanian was also asked about he managed to safely reach 
Armenia on board a helicopter while Nagorno-Karabakh’s eight former and current 
officials, including three former presidents, were arrested by Azerbaijan and 
now face grave charges in Baku.

Among the questions were also those about the fuel depot explosion on September 
25 as a result of which hundreds of people were killed and injured.

“Some realities were revealed to me that no one would have been entitled to 
receive information about on another platform,” said the head of the commission 
that is due to complete its investigation on December 3.

Kocharian said that Shahramanian’s testimony will be reflected in the final 
conclusions of the commission to be presented in a report due next year.

Kocharian said that before completing its work the commission also expects to 
question one of Nagorno-Karabakh’s former military commanders who was in charge 
of the Hadrut unit. He said that former Secretary of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Security 
Council Samvel Babayan has himself expressed a desire to testify before the 
commission.

Kocharian said that there was a legal obstacle to questioning Jalal Harutiunian, 
who led the Nagorno-Karabakh defense army during most of the 2020 war, as he is 
now facing criminal charges as part of a war-related investigation.

Journalists did not have an opportunity to ask questions to Shahramanian, who 
had entered the investigative commission room unnoticed and almost unnoticed 
left after the meeting ended.




Armenia Eyes Debt Reduction After Paying Russia For Undelivered Weapons


Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian answers questions sent in by the public, 
.


Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said Yerevan was looking for options to 
reduce its outstanding financial debt to Russia by using the payments it has 
made for weapons that Moscow has failed to deliver.

Pashinian made the remarks on November 24 during a live question-and-answer TV 
broadcast with the public when he was asked about weapons that Armenia had 
purchased from Russia but that were never delivered.

Earlier, Pashinian and other Armenian officials talked about “hundreds of 
millions of dollars” transferred to Moscow as part of arms purchase contracts 
that remained unfulfilled amid Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine.

One citizen asked Pashinian why his government would not consider the reversal 
of a controversial deal that Russia made with Armenia in the early 2000s to take 
possession of some of Armenia’s lucrative strategic assets in exchange for the 
South Caucasus nation’s debt.

The Armenian premier gave no figures, but again confirmed that there were 
problems with Russia’s fulfilling its arms contracts with Armenia.

He said reducing Armenia’s debt to Russia could be one of the mechanisms of 
settling the issue, but said there were other options as well.

“We know that Russia itself needs weapons. In this context, we expect to settle 
this issue in a routine working manner. I hope that our discussions will lead to 
concrete results,” Pashinian said.

Armenia has long been a close ally of Russia but – angered in part by what it 
saw as a lack of support from Moscow during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh and 
subsequent border clashes with Azerbaijan – has in recent months taken steps to 
distance itself from that alliance.

Armenia drew criticism from Moscow earlier this month after Pashinian said he 
would not attend the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) 
in Minsk, Belarus.

Other Armenian officials also declined to participate in events held by the 
CSTO, which also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, but a 
senior official in Yerevan on November 23 said Armenia nevertheless is not 
considering quitting the CSTO.




Armenia Says Azerbaijan Still Vague On Commitment To Peace


Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian answers questions sent in by the public, 
.


Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Friday that it still remains unclear 
whether Azerbaijan will ultimately commit to signing a peace agreement with 
Armenia based on the three principles that he said were agreed upon during 
negotiations mediated by the European Union.

Answering questions sent in by the public during a live TV broadcast, Pashinian 
referred to his meetings with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that were held 
with the mediation of European Council President Charles Michel in May and July.

The Armenian premier reiterated the three principles, including mutual 
recognition of territorial integrity and borders, border delimitation based on a 
1991 declaration signed by a dozen former Soviet republics, including Armenia 
and Azerbaijan, after the collapse of the USSR, and the sovereign jurisdictions 
of the states over transportation links passing through their territories.

“Now we cannot say with certainty that Azerbaijan refuses to sign a peace 
agreement based on these three principles, but we cannot say with certainty that 
Azerbaijan reaffirms its commitment to these three principles either. There is a 
need to clarify these issues and nuances during the negotiations,” Pashinian.

Azerbaijan appears to have avoided Western platforms for negotiations with 
Armenia after Azerbaijani forces recaptured the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh in a 
one-day military operation on September 19, causing more than 100,000 people, 
virtually the entire local Armenian population, to flee to Armenia.

Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev were scheduled to meet on the 
sidelines of the EU’s October 5 summit in Granada, Spain, for talks mediated by 
French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and European 
Council President Charles Michel.

European Council President Charles Michel hosts talks between Armenian Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Brussels, May 
14, 2023.

Pashinian had hoped that they would sign there a document laying out the main 
parameters of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. However, Aliyev withdrew 
from the talks at the last minute.

Baku cited France’s allegedly “biased position” against Azerbaijan as the reason 
for skipping those talks in Spain.

The Azerbaijani leader also appears to have canceled another meeting which the 
EU’s Michel planned to host in Brussels in late October.

Most recently Azerbaijan refused to attend a meeting with Armenia at the level 
of foreign ministers in Washington after allegedly “one-sided and biased” 
remarks by a senior U.S. official made during a congressional hearing on 
Nagorno-Karabakh. That meeting had reportedly been scheduled to take place on 
November 20.

In doing so Azerbaijan recently offered to hold direct talks with Armenia, 
including at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

Pashinian reaffirmed today that a meeting of the two countries’ officials 
engaged in border delimitation and demarcation activities will be held at a yet 
undisclosed location along the state frontier on November 30.

He said that Yerevan will draw conclusions from those discussions as to whether 
“Azerbaijan is ready for peace based on those principles or whether Azerbaijan 
rejects those principles.”

“We don’t have that confidence until today,” Pashinian said.

The Armenian leader did not say whether Yerevan also considers direct 
negotiations with Azerbaijan at the highest level.

On Thursday, Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safarian said that 
there are issues in negotiations “where the presence of mediators is mandatory 
and plays a very important role.”

“For example, issues related to the rights of the population forcibly displaced 
from Nagorno-Karabakh. The existence of international mechanisms is important 
here. There are also other issues where guarantees are important,” the senior 
Armenian diplomat said.

Armenia’s former President Serzh Sarkisian, meanwhile, warned that Yerevan 
should not engage in direct talks with Baku. He said such a format will deadlock 
the negotiation process.

Former Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian

He also warned that a peace agreement foisted on Armenia will also amount to a 
“surrender.”

Sarkisian claimed that if Pashinian is going to sign a peace agreement with 
Azerbaijan the way “as we see it now,” it will make him a “double capitulant” 
after the “surrender” that the ex-president alleged Pashinian signed in 2020 to 
stop the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Because unjust peace is a reason for a new war,” Sarkisian said.

Pashinian and members of his political team routinely deny that the 
Russia-brokered 2020 ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan amounted to a 
surrender. They, in turn, accuse Sarkisian and his predecessor Robert Kocharian 
of being the ones who paved the way for the military defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh 
by leaving a legacy of conflict and a “corruption-stricken” army and state to 
their government.




Armenia ‘To Consider’ Joining Documents Adopted By CSTO Summit It Skipped


Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (second from right) posing for a family photo 
with leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization during a summit not 
attended by Armenia. Minsk, Belarus, .


Armenia will consider whether to accede to the documents adopted as a result of 
the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit that it did not 
attend, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson in Yerevan said.

“We will consider the documents adopted as a result of the sessions of the CSTO 
statutory bodies… and, taking into account the procedures existing within the 
CSTO framework, the issue of Armenia’s accession to them,” Ani Badalian told the 
news program of Armenia’s Public Television late on Thursday.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials refused to go to 
Minsk to participate in the November 22-23 sessions hosted by Belarusian leader 
Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his government and attended by leaders and 
representatives of four other former Soviet countries, including Russian 
President Vladimir Putin.

According to officials in Yerevan, Armenia’s absence from the summit was due to 
the CSTO’s “failure to respond to the security challenges” facing the South 
Caucasus nation.

Armenia had appealed to the CSTO for military assistance in September 2022 
following two-day deadly border clashes with Azerbaijan that Yerevan said 
stemmed from Baku’s aggression against sovereign Armenian territory.

The Russia-led bloc stopped short of calling Azerbaijan the aggressor and 
effectively refused to back Armenia militarily, while agreeing to consider only 
sending an observation mission to the South Caucasus country.

Armenia later declined such a mission, saying that before it could be carried 
out the CSTO needed to give a clear political assessment of what Yerevan had 
described as Azerbaijan’s aggression and occupation of sovereign Armenian 
territory.

This week’s summit of the Russia-led defense bloc discussed “urgent problems of 
international and regional security” and made a number of decisions, including 
the approval of a new provision on the order of response of the CSTO to crisis 
situations and on the order of adoption and implementation of collective 
decisions on the use of forces.

The summit also approved the appointment of Russian Colonel General Andrei 
Serdyukov to the post of the head of the Joint Staff of the CSTO and a 
regulation on the joint press center of the CSTO.

Belarusian Foreign Minister Syarhey Aleynyk acknowledged before the leaders of 
Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan gathered for the summit 
that Armenia’s absence meant the lack of a quorum, but he told journalists that 
all the decisions approved would be “absolutely legitimate.”

Aleynyk said he had discussed “issues and mechanisms for approving decisions” 
with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan in a phone call. The Belarusian 
minister said that according to the CSTO rules, all decisions are made in 
consultation with all countries.

“We agreed that after the summit, the secretary-general of the CSTO will visit 
Yerevan. And, of course, we will pass all the decisions that were finalized here 
as part of the conciliation commission to our Armenian partners. And we will 
count on them to join us,” Aleynyk said.




Private Remittances To Armenia Dwindle In 2023

        • Robert Zargarian


The net amount of private remittances entering Armenia has decreased by more 
than 20 percent, standing at some $1.3 billion in the first nine months of this 
year, the latest statistical data shows.

In January-September 2022, the net inflow of money to Armenia was about $1.8 
billion.

According to experts, this decline shows that the positive influence of the 
influx of Russians and their money on the economy of Armenia after Russia’s 
invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is weakening.

“Demand-driven economic growth was also at the expense of the tripling of 
remittances, but this has become less of a factor, and, unfortunately, 
predictions about that are coming true and now the opposite is happening,” said 
Tadevos Avetisian, a member of the opposition Hayastan faction in the Armenian 
parliament.

Avetisian also said last year that those flows had external reasons and were not 
the result of the government’s activities, a view not entirely shared by 
Armenian officials.

According to the economist, the money that rapidly flow in also tend to rapidly 
flow out. “Now we are already at this stage, and this outflow of money puts 
stress on the economic processes as well,” he said.

According to the data of the Central Bank, money inflows to Armenia increased 
significantly in April 2022, some two months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 
that triggered a war that still continues between the two countries today.

It was during that period that the influx of Russians fleeing Western sanctions, 
reprisals or later the military draft began.

The net amount of private remittances to Armenia was steadily increasing for a 
year, but began to show an opposite trend since March of this year when more 
money started to flow out of Armenia.

And although the amount of money sent from abroad continues to be relatively 
large, the amount of funds leaving Armenia has increased significantly. Of the 
nearly $4,3 million that entered Armenia in the form of private remittances in 
January-September 2023, some $3 billion have already left. In the same period of 
2022, almost twice less, $1.7 billion, left Armenia.

According to Avetisian, last year’s large cash inflow was mostly not capitalized 
in Armenia, the money was not turned into investments and remained on bank 
accounts. Now, he said, this money is leaving.

“To put it figuratively, that money came to Armenia and hid here for a while, 
and now it is leaving Armenia due to new geopolitical realities. In other words, 
the hot money effect is when people withdraw their capitals from a country where 
there is a possibility of a military conflict,” the economist said.

Statistics shows that the lion’s share of the outflow of money from Armenia goes 
to Russia and the United States. This year people in Armenia have already wired 
half a billion dollars in private remittances to Russia, almost twice as much as 
in the same period of 2022. A total of $323 million was transferred to the 
United States during nine months, which is by nearly 60 percent more than last 
year.

According to economist Suren Parsian, in order to keep the money in Armenia, 
first a favorable investment environment should be created to attract those who 
have money so that they do not look for options in other countries.

“We must have a developed stock exchange where people can, for example, buy 
shares, bonds, and also have the opportunity to start a business in Armenia. 
There should be such an environment so that they can implement their ideas and 
projects here,” Parsian said.

Acknowledging external factors behind the influx of money into Armenia in 2022, 
the Armenian government has not shared the opposition’s view that it was 
entirely due to those factors that people came and brought their money to the 
country. Officials have pointed to efforts of the Armenian government to create 
an appropriate climate and business opportunities in Armenia.

At a weekly cabinet session on Thursday Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian 
touted his government’s success in setting a new record in terms of registered 
jobs in the country.

Pashinian said that around 183,000 new jobs have been created in Armenia, a 
country with a population of some 3 million people, since he first became prime 
minister in May 2018. The current number of registered jobs in Armenia, he said, 
stands at 730,000.



Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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