Author: Kajoyan Gevork

                                        Tuesday, August 2, 2022


Armenian, Russian Leaders Talk Amid Heightened Tensions In Karabakh


Russian peacekeepers guard an area in the town of Lachin, December 1, 2020.


Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by 
phone on Tuesday after Azerbaijan reportedly demanded the closure of the sole 
corridor connecting Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, discussed the situation around the 
Lachin corridor with his top security officials as well as leaders of local 
political forces at an emergency meeting held in Stepanakert.

“Through the [Russian] peacekeeping contingent stationed in Artsakh, the 
Azerbaijani side has demanded that traffic [between Armenia and Karabakh] be 
organized along a new route in the near future,” his office said in a statement 
on the meeting.

The Karabakh leaders discussed “measures that need to be taken in the current 
situation, including ensuring safe traffic with the help of the Russian 
peacekeeping forces,” it added without elaborating.

The Azerbaijani side did not immediately comment on the claim. There were also 
no public statements by Armenian officials.

The Kremlin said Putin and Pashinian discussed “some practical aspects of 
implementing the trilateral agreements” reached by the leaders of Russia, 
Armenia and Azerbaijan during and after the 2020 war in Karabakh. It did not go 
into details. Pashinian’s office released an identical statement on the call.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Armenian counterpart Ararat 
Mirzoyan also held a phone call on Tuesday. According to the Armenian Foreign 
Ministry, they discussed “the security situation in the region.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry reported later in the day that Defense Minister Sergei 
Shoigu phoned his Azerbaijani counterpart Zakir Hasanov. In a short statement, 
the ministry said they spoke about regional security and “other topics of mutual 
interest.”

Nagorno-Karabakh - President Arayik Harutiunian holds an emergency meeting in 
Stepanakert, August 2, 2022.

The five-kilometer-wide Lachin corridor became Karabakh’s sole overland link to 
Armenia following the 2020 war. Armenian forces pulled out of the rest of the 
wider Lachin district under the terms of the Russian-brokered ceasefire that 
stopped the six-week hostilities.

The truce accord calls for the construction by 2024 of a new Armenia-Karabakh 
highway that will bypass the town of Lachin and two Armenian-populated villages 
located within the current corridor protected by Russian peacekeeping troops.

Azerbaijani and Turkish construction firms have been rapidly building a 
32-kilomer-long highway that will link up to new road sections in Armenia and 
Karabakh. Armenia’s Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures 
said last Friday that work on the Armenian section will start in August.

The authorities in Stepanakert reported the Azerbaijani demand to switch to the 
new corridor the day after accusing Azerbaijani forces of attacking Karabakh 
Armenian army positions in the disputed territory’s northwest. They said that 
one Karabakh soldier was wounded as a result.

A view of the village of Vank in Nagorno-Karabakh's west.

Baku denied violating the ceasefire regime. However, the Russian Defense 
Ministry confirmed on Tuesday that there were “three ceasefire violations by the 
Azerbaijani Armed Forces.”

“The Russian peacekeeper command, in cooperation with representatives of the 
Azerbaijani and Armenian sides, has resolved the situation,” added the ministry. 
“No changes in the line of contact were allowed.”

The Karabakh army also did not report fresh fighting on Tuesday. Still, its 
commander, Kamo Vartanian, said in the afternoon that “tension persists at some 
sections of the line of contact.”

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried appeared to have discussed the 
heightened tensions with the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in 
separate phone calls on Monday.

“She called for de-escalation and encouraged continued dialogue,” the U.S. State 
Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs tweeted afterwards.

The European Union’s special envoy to the South Caucasus, Toivo Klaar, likewise 
urged the conflicting sides to “deescalate and avoid derailing an historic 
opportunity to turn the page on decades of strife.”



European Body ‘Asked For Advice’ On Armenian Asset Seizures

        • Naira Nalbandian

Armenia - Venice Commission President Claire Bazy Malaurie addresses a 
conference on judicial reforms in Yerevan, June 8, 2022.


Armenia’s Constitutional Court claims to have asked legal experts from the 
Council of Europe to give an “advisory opinion” on a controversial Armenian law 
allowing the confiscation of assets deemed to have been acquired illegally.

The law enacted two years ago allows prosecutors to seek asset forfeiture in 
case of having “sufficient grounds to suspect” that the market value of an 
individual’s properties exceeds their “legal income” by at least 50 million 
drams ($120,000).

Armenian courts can allow the nationalization of such assets even if their 
owners are not found guilty of corruption or other criminal offenses. The latter 
would have to prove the legality of their holdings.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly portrayed this as a major 
anti-corruption measure that will help his administration recover “wealth stolen 
from the people.” Opposition figures claim, however, that Pashinian is simply 
planning a far-reaching “redistribution of assets” to cement his hold on power.

Last November, lawmakers representing Armenia’s main opposition forces appealed 
to the Constitutional Court to declare the law in question unconstitutional. 
They said that it contradicts articles of the Armenian constitution guaranteeing 
the presumption of innocence and property rights.

The court has still not ruled on the appeal. It announced on July 8 that it has 
asked the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe for legal advice on the 
matter.

The Strasbourg-based organization’s press office told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service 
on Tuesday that the Venice Commission has not yet received the application from 
Armenia’s highest court.

Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets with judges of the Constitutional 
Court, December 27, 2021.

Ara Ghazarian, an Armenian expert on international law, suggested that the 
commission is unlikely to recommend a blanket scrapping of the law sought by the 
opposition.

“Through its case law, the European Court [of Human Rights] has long given the 
green light to the adoption and enforcement of such laws, saying that they do 
not contradict the European Convention [on Human Rights] in principle,” argued 
Ghazarian. “The Venice Commission will draw conclusions along those lines.”

At the same time, he said, the commission could call for limiting retroactive 
application of the law and making it harder for the authorities to seize assets.

Armenian prosecutors have filed 12 asset forfeiture cases in courts to date. 
They involve about 200 properties and vehicles as well as 21 billion drams ($51 
million) in cash belonging to former government or law-enforcement officials 
and/or their family members.

So far no court rulings have been handed down on any of those cases. There have 
been suggestions that judges dealing with them have serious misgivings about the 
legality of asset forfeiture.

The prosecutors have also secured court injunctions freezing a comparable amount 
of assets held by 25 other individuals or their relatives. The latter too will 
have to fight for their expensive properties, businesses and cash holdings in 
court.



Government Official Denies Crackdown On Former Yerevan Mayor

        • Narine Ghalechian
        • Nane Sahakian

Armenia - Mayor Hayk Marutian walks out of a session of Yerevan's municipal 
council shortly before it voted to oust him, December 22, 2021.


The head of an Armenian government inspectorate has denied suggestions that its 
allegations of serious financial irregularities committed by Yerevan’s municipal 
administration are designed to quash former Mayor Hayk Marutian’s political 
ambitions.

The State Oversight Service (SOS) began auditing the municipality’s financial 
operations last December just days after the city council controlled by Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party ousted Marutian.

The SOS claimed last week to have found evidence of various “violations” worth a 
combined 8.5 billion drams ($20 million). It asked law-enforcement authorities 
to investigate the findings of the audit, raising the possibility of criminal 
charges against Marutian.

Speaking in the RFE/RL studio in Yerevan on Monday, the head of the SOS, Romanos 
Petrosian, insisted that the audit and the resulting allegations are not 
politically motivated. He argued that his agency is also inspecting many other 
state bodies.

“It’s not that the SOS can arbitrarily ignore obedient [officials] and audit 
disobedient ones,” said Petrosian.

The official, who is a senior member of the ruling Civil Contract party, said he 
believes that at least some of the alleged irregularities resulted from 
“corruption schemes.”

“But Hayk Marutian did not govern the city of Yerevan on his own, and [all 
municipal officials] from junior specialists to the mayor exercised their 
powers,” he went on. “So this must not be politicized.”

Responding on the SOS’s allegations late last week, Marutian said through a 
spokesman that he welcomes “efforts to increase the efficiency of resource 
management” in central and local government bodies. He did not comment further.

The ex-mayor commented scathingly on July 1 after several pro-government 
websites alleged that the Yerevan municipality embezzled or misused otherwise as 
much as $40 million on his watch. He suggested that the allegations are aimed at 
discouraging him from participating in the next municipal elections.

Marutian, 45, is a former TV comedian who actively participated in the “velvet 
revolution” that brought Pashinian to power in May 2018. Pashinian chose the 
popular entertainer to lead his bloc’s list of candidates in the last Yerevan 
elections held in September 2018

Relations between the two men deteriorated after the 2020 war over 
Nagorno-Karabakh. Marutian increasingly distanced himself from the prime 
minister’s political team and pointedly declined to support it during snap 
parliamentary elections held in June 2021.


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2022 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

 

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