Armenians who fled Turkish rule decades ago despair over Nagorno-Karabakh. ‘This appears to be our fate’

Los Angeles Times
Oct 6 2023

BY NABIH BULOSFOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

ANJAR, Lebanon — Hilda Doumanian stood in the main hall of the Anjar museum, scanning the glass cases holding items her ethnic Armenian forebears salvaged from their lands before they escaped to Lebanon more than eight decades ago.

“This appears to be our fate: to be forcibly displaced every few decades,” she said, walking up to one of the displays: A collection of rust-encrusted kitchenware and bundles of braided silk from a village loom. Ancient-looking rifles. Religious vessels. Bibles so old their pages appeared more suspended dust than paper.

“The Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the 20th century,” she said, slowly shaking her head in resignation, referring to the 1915 genocide by the Ottoman Empire.

“Now in the 21st century we see the first genocide, and it’s Armenians again.”

A gardener tends to the plants at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in the historic town of Anjar in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. The memorial commemorates the mass killings of Armenians as part of the genocide under the Ottoman Empire in 1915. (Joseph Eid / AFP via Getty Images)

On Doumanian’s mind was the exodus taking place over the last two weeks from what many Armenians see as their ancestral homelands — a further erasure of their history.

More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians, fearing ethnic cleansing at the hands of their Azerbaijani adversaries, have abandoned their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh, the mountainous enclave inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders where they had established their self-declared state.

WORLD & NATION

Amid fury over Nagorno-Karabakh, could Armenia’s government fall next?

Sept. 27, 2023

In the more than 30 years of its existence, the Republic of Artsakh, not formally recognized by any nation, had established the trappings of a country — a government, a standing army, a flag. But it all crumbled before a withering Azerbaijani blitzkrieg last month, with the enclave’s leaders forced to surrender and announce the republic’s dissolution by the end of the year.

Though Azerbaijan’s government offered to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population as equal citizens, most, unwilling to countenance Azerbaijani rule, fled into Armenia in a refugee convoy that at its peak stretched more than 60 miles. Fewer than a thousand remain behind. Those who fled cite the Azeris’ decades-old animus toward Armenians and the triumphalist rhetoric of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for their distrust, no matter what Azerbaijan says.

For millions in Armenia and the diaspora, the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the long-held dream of constructing a state on Armenian homeland, was a blow. The shock resonates in a personal way in Anjar, whose residents are almost all ethnic Armenians whose ancestors fled here from Musa Dagh, or Moses Mountain, a territory in what is now southern Turkey.

An ethnic Armenian woman from Nagorno-Karabakh carries her suitcase to a tent camp after arriving in Goris, Armenia. (Vasily Krestyaninov / Associated Press)

When the people of Musa Dagh heard of the coming genocidal campaign in 1915, they refused to obey Turkish authorities’ command to leave their houses in the mountains. They resisted for a month and a half, losing 18 people before a French naval vessel rescued and took them to Egypt, where they stayed for four years, returning after the Ottoman Empire’s loss in World War I.

In 1939, when French authorities controlling the area under a postwar mandate handed it to Turkey, the inhabitants of Musa Dagh faced yet another agonizing choice: Accept Turkish control or leave. Fearing a repeat of the bloodshed in 1915, they were escorted out by French troops to settle in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, on land bought from an Ottoman feudal lord.

WORLD & NATION

‘Staying, for us, is impossible.’ Thousands of ethnic Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh

Sept. 26, 2023

“We refused to live under the Turks, because we knew they would do the same thing as before,” Doumanian said.

Watching a new wave of displacement hit Armenians brought back memories of long-held pain, said Isabel Kendirjian, a bedridden but alert 90-year-old who still remembers coming to Anjar when she was 6.

“It’s the same thing that happened to us. This is how we felt back then,” she said.

“They gave us eight days to leave Musa Dagh. We took everything we could and went on the buses to here,” she said. “There was nothing. Very few trees. We lived in tents.”

The new Anjaris stayed in those tents for roughly two years while authorities built up the town, organizing it into six neighborhoods, each named after a village in Musa Dagh. The houses the French provided were single-room structures measuring 12 square feet along with a bathroom.

“Four people, 20 people, it didn’t matter. Everyone was in one room,” Doumanian said.”We still call them beit Faransi, a French house, to this day.”

Tensions between Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians date to the days of the Ottoman Empire, but the war for Nagorno-Karabakh was rooted in the fall of a more contemporary empire: the Soviet Union.

In 1988, inside the roiling Soviet landscape, the enclave’s ethnic Armenian majority chose to secede from one Soviet republic, Azerbaijan, and unite with another, Armenia. The move sparked an ethnic conflict with Azeris that saw massacres and pogroms on both sides, and an estimated million displaced people, mostly Azeris.

Six years later, by which time the Soviet Union had collapsed, the ethnic Armenians won. They claimed Nagorno-Karabakh (which Armenians call Artsakh) and its surrounding districts in what other nations viewed as a violation of international law.

Donations poured in from the Armenian diaspora, including from the the late California businessman and philanthropist Kirk Kerkorian, whose largesse helped funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to fund schools and a major highway in the fledgling republic. Stop-start negotiations over the years never got anywhere.

In the meantime, Azerbaijan had used its vast oil and gas riches to retool its army. Armenia’s confidence in its ability to keep the status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh, not to mention its contempt for an enemy it had long dismissed as cowardly, meant that it was woefully unprepared when Azerbaijan launched an assault in 2020 and snatched back most of the land it lost.

A cease-fire guaranteed by Russia, Armenia’s main patron, was to be the prelude to a peace treaty. But tensions continued, culminating in Azerbaijan blockading the territory in December, then launching a lightning onslaught last month that routed the Artsakh Republic’s army. Moscow, preoccupied with its war on Ukraine and displeased with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s recent overtures to the West, stood by as Azerbaijan pursued its campaign.

Pashinyan, aware of his military’s limitations and with little diplomatic backing, refused to intervene, infuriating many Armenians.

Varian Khoshian, the mayor of Anjar, feels ashamed at the loss. His passion about the concept of Artsakh runs so deep that he named his son — now an officer in the Lebanese army — after it.

He blamed the rout on Pashinyan and his policy of antagonizing Armenia’s traditional ally, Russia, for the West’s sake, pointing to another sign of fraying ties with Moscow that came Tuesday when Armenia’s parliament ratified the International Criminal Court’s founding Rome Statute.

Because the court in March issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war in Ukraine, the ratification means Armenia would have to arrest Putin if he stepped on Armenian soil. The Kremlin called the decision “incorrect,” a position with which Khoshian agreed.

“We had a strong umbrella. We like the West, sure, but we got a smaller umbrella from America that doesn’t cover us,” he said.

During Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, Khoshian learned to work with groups he didn’t like, but it was for the good of Anjar; Pashinyan should have done the same, the mayor said.

“I don’t love the Russians. But I need them for my homeland,” Khoshian said. “That’s how you have to think. Otherwise you lose.”

Despite all that, he insisted the war for Nagorno-Karabakh was not over.

“I can’t give up. We will come back. We have to,” he said. “Those lands are the property of our ancestors.”

And it was more than just a matter of emotions.

“We know the value of Artsakh, its strategic location for Armenia,” Khoshian said.

Azerbaijan, he continued, was intent on taking parts of southern Armenia for a land corridor linking its territory to Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan’s exclave on Armenia’s southwestern side.

“It’s the first domino. Once Artsakh falls, you’ll find other Armenian cities in the south falling.”

Armenians have been demanding a stronger military response, with protests among diaspora groups in Southern California and frequent demonstrations in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, against Pashinyan and what many see as his capitulation.

In Armenian-dominated neighborhoods in Beirut, graffiti targets Azerbaijan’s president, Aliyev, and his top ally, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The stenciled graffiti calls Aliyev a killer and declares that Karabakh will always be Armenian. Lebanon’s main Armenian party held a demonstration in front of the Azerbaijani Embassy that turned violent. In Anjar, high schoolers had their own anti-Turkish protest, carrying placards with Erdogan’s face and chanting their support for Artsakh.

Yessayi Havatian, an agricultural supplies merchant and Anjar historian, wondered whether the future fate of Karabakh Armenians would be to go to war again, or whether they would become like the Armenians of Musa Dagh, cut off from their ancestral lands.

“Our people thought of going back. For 14 years they refused to plant orchards on the land here. Why? Because they said, ‘We’re not going to stay that long.’ They believed they would go home,” Havatian said.

Whatever Karabakh Armenians choose, he added, it was clear that Armenians couldn’t pursue the war as they had in the past.

“We the Armenians made a mistake: We relied on someone other than us to defend us. The world watched our people forcibly displaced and did nothing. And no one will do anything,” he said.

“No one will defend Armenia other than the Armenians. That’s the solution.”

France welcomes Armenia’s ratification of Rome Statute

 16:24, 3 October 2023

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 3, ARMENPRESS. French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, who is now visiting Armenia, has welcomed the ratification of the Rome Statute by the Armenian parliament.

Saluting the move in a post on X, Colonna said that Armenia is now becoming a participating country in the international criminal court. “The fight against impunity of crimes is one of the conditions for peace and stability,” she said.

Inside the Matenadaran, the Stone Fortress Protecting the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts

Popular Mechanics
Sept 29 2023

Since the Middle Ages, scriptoria throughout the world have preserved manuscripts for future generations. Armenia’s Matenadaran continues that tradition.

Ancient manuscripts connect us to our distant past. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to understand our histories, traditions, and knowledge gleaned from many lifetimes of experience. But there’s a big problem: paper and parchment aren’t known for longevity. The reason we can read about the plays of ancient Greeks, understand the wisdom of Eastern philosophies, or even glimpse the yellowing founding documents of entire nations is thanks to legions of archivists throughout history who’ve meticulously restored, protected, and preserved these old (and prone to crumbling) manuscripts for future generations.

Throughout the Middle Ages, scriptoria around the world served as repositories of human knowledge, and in Yerevan, Armenia, the museum and research institute known as the Matenadaran continues that tradition.

Visit the Matenadaran today and you’re greeted by a grand, fortress-like building constructed from gray basalt stone. At the building’s entrance is a large statue of Mesrop Mashtots, a medieval Armenian linguist who’s credited with developing the Armenian alphabet. This imposing structure denotes the importance of the delicate treasures found inside—23,000 manuscripts, with some dating back 1,500 years. Although the Matenadaran is home to the largest collection of Armenian manuscripts in the world, it also houses ancient texts from other civilizations throughout history.

“Matenadaran means the ‘repository of manuscripts,’” Vahe Torosyan, a scientist secretary at the Matenadaran, tells Popular Mechanics. “However, the Matenadaran is not only a storehouse of manuscripts but a research institute and a museum where manuscripts are stored, cared for, restored, studied scientifically, and displayed.”

Albert Mityaev

Restoring these manuscripts requires an intense level of artistry and dedication. Before restorers can even begin repairing battered manuscripts, they first need to clean the surfaces of pages and miniatures (the small illustrations that often accompany medieval texts). This means removing any dust, candle wax, insects, dirt, stains and more that might’ve adhered to the brittle pages over the centuries. Paper and pigments are also examined under a microscope to make sure that paint layers are solid before cleaning can begin.

Restorers then use a special, handmade Japanese paper created from the bark of mulberry trees to repair the pages, whether a small tear or a gaping rip. Using this specialized paper—in various thicknesses and shades—restorers can create a seamless transition between the original document and the restored parts.

“Japanese paper is a unique material and has a special structure,” Gayane Eliazyan, head of the department of restoration, tells Popular Mechanics. “The edges of the paper have long fibers that are easy to connect with the original paper, and the passage from the original manuscript material to the Japanese paper occurs very smoothly.”

Although preserving ancient texts is a centuries-old profession, 21st century technology provides the ultimate protection for these fragile objects. When a document contains undertext, which is writing that’s been replaced by existing text, the Matenadaran uses multi-spectral imaging to capture the manuscript in 28 distinct frames—each frame representing a range of the visual spectrum as well as UV and infrared light. These various light spectra can capture the hidden words hidden beneath the work.

With these digital recreations along with digital scans of other manuscripts, physical texts never leave the safety of the Matenadaran itself.

Preserving this book block is only one part of the restoration process; the restorers also bring that same level of exacting attention to mending a manuscript’s binding, leather cover, and endband (the woven decorative parts found at the upper and lower edges of the book’s spine).

Eliazyan says that the restoration department of the Matenadaran also has a biological laboratory, and like many laboratories around the world, it faces funding challenges. The department needs new equipment to keep up with new restoration techniques.

As Armenian universities still do not have educational programs for certifying restorers, the Matenadaran serves as a teaching center and school for this specialization. Eliazyan hopes that continued support from grantors or the Armenian government will help train the next generations of specialists eager to be keepers of the heritage of human knowledge—past and present.

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough. 

 

Both sides claim ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Nagorno-Karabakh

RTE , Ireland
Sept 29 2023

Some 88,780 people have crossed into Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh, according to Armenian government figures, quoted by the RIA news agency.

The exodus of ethnic Armenians from the breakaway region began after the fall of its separatist government last week following a military operation by Azerbaijan.

The enclave is to become a full part of Azerbaijan by the end of the year.

The Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Ireland said that his country offered the ethnic Armenian people an option to remain, but "we cannot force them to stay".

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Elin Suleymanov claimed they are leaving because of "uncertainty which follows 30 years of occupation of Azerbaijan by Armenia".

He asked: "Why is the formally diverse region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan now 100% Armenian?

"That is because everybody else has been ethnically cleansed.

"One million people in Karabakh and surrounding regions were ethnically cleansed in the 1990s.

"Now we don't want to do what they've done to us and that's why everybody, including the president and everybody in Azerbaijan, is offering them to stay.

"We understand that there is uncertainty. We understand that there is a fear of safety …. Those are understandable concerns given they are part of a conflict for a long time".

Mr Suleymanov said the same standard should apply to Nagorno-Karabakh as it does in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova.

He said that Azerbaijan has restored its integrity and constitutional law in accordance with international law.

Yesterday, Armenia's Ambassador to Ireland told the same programme that the "forced depopulation" of the indigenous Armenian people from Nagorno-Karabakh was "a tragic loss for the Armenian people and for civilisation".

Varuzhan Nersesyan said that Azerbaijan made a "fake promise" of reintegration but it is "nothing but a policy of ethnic cleansing" and "nobody wants to stay … under Azerbaijani rule".

Armenians were subjected to a nine-month blockade, he said, and the "mass exodus" from the region began once the corridor reopened.

"Most likely, we're going to see the departure of most – the predominant part – of the population.

"There might be some who will decide to stay, but basically this population has the right to stay on its own indigenous land."

It is unfortunate that the international community did not create "robust conditions" to prevent this from happening, Mr Nersesyan said.

Death toll from fuel depot blast in Karabakh rises to 170 – media

The death toll from an explosion and fire at a fuel depot in Nagorno-Karabakh has risen to 170, Armen press news agency has reported, citing local officials in the region.

The blast occurred as thousands of ethnic Armenians fled the area.

The authorities have not given any explanation of the cause of the blast.

Rescue work at the site continues.

UN preparing for 120K refugees in Armenia after Nagorno-Karabakh takeover

Global News, Canada
Sept 29 2023

Over 88,000 people have crossed into Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh and the total could reach 120,000, said a U.N. refugee agency official on Friday, a figure matching estimates of the entire population of the breakaway region recaptured by Azerbaijan last week.

Kavita Belani, UNHCR representative in Armenia, told a U.N. press briefing by video link that huge crowds of tired and frightened people were gathering at registration centres.

“This is a situation where they’ve lived under nine months of blockade,” she said. “And when they come in, they’re full of anxiety, they’re scared, they’re frightened and they want answers.”

“We are ready to cope with up to 120,000 people. It’s very hard to predict how many will come at this juncture,” she added in response to a question about refugee numbers. Initial planning figures were for between 70-90,000 refugees but that needs updating, she added.

Nearly a third of the refugees are children, another U.N. official told the briefing.

“The major concern for us is that many of them have been separated from their family,” said Regina De Dominicis, UNICEF regional director.

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies representative Hicham Diab said there was a massive need for mental health support for refugees.

“The situation often involves families arriving with children so weak that they have fainted in their parents’ arms,” he said.

Carlos Morazzani, operations manager of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said it had transferred around 200 bodies out of Karabakh on Thursday – victims of a fuel depot explosion and recent fighting.

Going forward, it will be focusing on helping those left behind with basic food and hygiene items.

“We had been planning for the evacuation to be a longer process,” he said. “The evacuations this week have gone very fast, very high numbers of people, but as a result of that many people become stranded.”

(Reporting by Emma FargeEditing by Miranda Murray and Peter Graff)


23 wounded persons transported from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia

 11:51,

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 24, ARMENPRESS. 23 seriously and critically wounded persons are being transported from Nagorno-Karabakh to hospitals in Armenia, the Ministry of Healthcare of Armenia said on Sunday.

The victims are being evacuated by 23 ambulances under the supervision of medics.

The ambulances, escorted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, have already crossed the Hakari Bridge, the ministry said.

US, Armenia hold military drills as Russia’s influence weakens in Caucasus

Sept 12 2023
Washington has a finger on the scale as Armenia accuses Russia of failing to protect it against Azerbaijan.


WASHINGTON — The United States and Armenia kicked off combined military exercises this week designed to train Armenian troops to participate in international peacekeeping missions, Armenia’s Defense Ministry said.

The exercise, dubbed "Eagle Partner," includes 85 US and 175 Armenian personnel and is being held over 10 days at training facilities outside the capital Yerevan.

Why it matters: Tensions between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan are soaring. Both sides have accused each other of building up troops near the disputed territory of Karabakh.

The US military training mission puts Washington’s finger on the scale as it seeks to blunt Russia’s inroads in the Caucasus and amid a wider effort for rapprochement with Turkey.

Armenia has relied on a contingent of Russian peacekeeping troops since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, but Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has accused them of failing both to protect his side against Azerbaijan’s forces and to alleviate Baku’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Earlier in September, Pashinyan went so far as to say his government had made a “strategic mistake” to rely on Russia for defense ties, citing Moscow’s own need for munitions amid its war in Ukraine.

Russian reaction: Moscow summoned Armenia’s ambassador Vagharshak Harutyunyan in protest on Friday. 

On Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin sought to downplay the rift by emphasizing Russia’s longstanding ties with Armenia. “We have no problems with Prime Minister Pashinyan, as we communicate regularly,” he said.

Russia has remained Armenia's largest trading partner since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Wider context: Last week, Armenia held elections in the disputed territory in a move condemned by Azerbaijan and Turkey. The United States and the European Union said they did not recognize the legitimacy of the elections.

Coinciding with the military exercises, on Sunday the Biden administration reiterated its call on Azerbaijan to open two corridors to allow humanitarian supplies to reach Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been under a crippling blockade since December.

“The use of force to resolve disputes is unacceptable,” the State Department said in a press release.

“The United States further reaffirms the only way forward is peace, dialogue, and the normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the basis of mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” it read.

Armenian authorities in Karabakh announced on Saturday that one of the roads, the Lachin corridor, would be opened to allow supplies to flow from Baku, a decision confirmed by Azerbaijan.

Baku’s armed forces chief of staff visited Ankara to meet with Turkey’s new defense chief Yasar Guler on Monday.

Know more: Read Amberin Zaman’s reporting from southeastern Armenia as fears began mounting in January amid the blockade.


https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/09/us-armenia-hold-military-drills-russias-influence-weakens-caucasus

Senior Armenian diplomat outlines minimum steps Azerbaijan should take to build confidence

 11:37,

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS. The international community and mediators should demand from Azerbaijan to take adequate steps in response to Armenia’s steps of confidence building, Ambassador-at-Large Edmon Marukyan has said.

“The lack of confidence between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a fundamental problem and it must be solved in order to reach any meaningful results in the peace process. I can confidently state that during the last two years, the Prime Minister of Armenia has taken all possible and seemingly impossible steps to build confidence in peace talks in order to achieve long-lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Marukyan said in a post on X.

“In response to all those steps, Azerbaijan continued to keep prisoners of war and other civilians in its prisons, abducted new hostages from the territory of Armenia and the Lachin Corridor, did not withdraw its troops from the sovereign territories of Armenia, attacking it periodically, killing and wounding more people… keeps the communications blocked, torpedoes delimitation process of state borders, besieges and starves 120,000 people of Nagorno-Karabakh, rejects talks between Baku and Stepanakert under international mechanisms. All this has undermined and continues to damage the peace process, as well as the efforts of all mediators invested in it. Now, in addition to all of that, Azerbaijan has concentrated its troops along the contact line of Nagorno-Karabakh and the sovereign territory of Armenia, and focused all its state propaganda to war talks, threatening the fragile regional peace. In order to return the peace process to its comprehensible stage, the international community and mediators should demand from Azerbaijan to take adequate steps in response to Armenia’s steps of confidence building. As a result of this, Azerbaijan shall stop the blockade of Nagorno Karabakh, start talks with the representatives of Nagorno Karabakh within the framework of the international mechanism that will guarantee the rights and security of its people, shall withdraw its armed forces from the sovereign territory of Armenia, release all prisoners of war and other detained persons from Azerbaijani prisons, shall begin the process of delimitation and demarcation based on the map of 1975, and unblock all transport communications based on the sovereignty of the parties and national legislation. These are the minimum steps that can build confidence for bringing long-lasting peace in the region,” he added.

Iran’s IRGC publishes warning to Azerbaijan of troop placement on border

i24, Israel
Sept 9 2023

As the conflict with Armenia escalates at the border, a separatist government in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh were holding elections

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps published a warning to Azerbaijan on Saturday, threatening Baku with the placement of troops on their shared border, amid elections held by a separatist government in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh.

The video indicated Iranian forces were concentrated on the shared border with Azerbaijan and Armenia. The IRGC then proclaimed readiness to support Yerevan.

Russian sources also claimed that the Iranians were ready to transfer military units to Armenia for support operation. A day earlier, the Kremlin summoned Yerevan’s envoy to Moscow over “unfriendly steps” amid joint military drills between the U.S. and Armenians.

The Russian foreign ministry also complained about a trip to Kyiv by the Armenian Prime Minister's wife and Yerevan's move to join the International Criminal Court, as well as the detention of a blogger for Russia’s sputnik media outlet.

The statement concluded that the Armenian envoy was given a "tough presentation,” but stressed that Russia and Armenia "remain allies and all agreements on developing the strengthening of the partnership will be fulfilled.”

In 2020, Azerbaijan fought Armenia in a continuing conflict around the Nagorno-Karabakh region, with the latest ceasefire being brokered by Moscow and included the presence of Russian peacekeepers.

Also on Saturday, a separatist government in Nagorno-Karabakh set out to elect a new leader after its previous president, Arayik Haratyunyan, resigned amid widespread food and fuel shortages.

Haratyunyan suggested in his resignation letter that his presidency was an obstacle to negotiations with Azerbaijan and that "difficulties in the country have significantly reduced the trust in the authorities."

Azerbaijan called the latest election in Nagorno-Karabakh "yet another extremely provocative step" and "a clear violation of Azerbaijan's sovereignty and territorial integrity,” as quoted by AFP.

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/iran-eastern-states/1694248822-iran-s-irgc-publishes-video-warning-azerbaijan-of-troop-placement-on-border

Asbarez: Armenia to Host Military Drills with U.S.; Russia Voices Concern

U.S. and Armenian troops interact during military drills in Europe


Armenia announced on Wednesday that it will host joint military exercises with the United States next week and the Kremlin was quick to voice concerns.

Armenia will host what is known as the Eagle Partner 2023 joint Armenia-U.S. military exercises from September 11 to 20, the defense ministry announced on Wednesday, saying that the drills will take place in the “‘Zar’ Training Center of the Peacekeeping Brigade and the N Training Center of the Ministry of Defense.”

“The purpose of the exercise is to increase the level of interoperability of the unit participating in international peacekeeping missions within the framework of peacekeeping operations, to exchange best practices in control and tactical communication, as well as to increase the readiness of the Armenian unit for the planned NATO/PfP [Partnership for Peace] ‘Operational Capabilities Concept’ evaluation,” Armenia’s defense ministry added.

Armenia has been part of the NATO-led peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan and the Balkans.

“Within the framework of preparation for peacekeeping missions, units preparing for international peacekeeping operations frequently participate in similar joint exercises and trainings in partner countries,” the defense ministry added.

A Pentagon spokesperson said Wednesday that the 85 American soldiers and 175 Armenians would take part, Reuters reported. The source said the Americans – including members of the Kansas National Guard which has a 20-year-old training partnership with Armenia – would be armed with rifles and would not be using heavy weaponry.

This announcement about the exercises has raised concerns in the Kremlin, whose spokesperson on Tuesday hit back at Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for claiming that Armenia’s decades-long alliance with Russia could be deemed a “strategic mistake” and saying that Russia had failed to protect Armenia against attacks from Azerbaijan.

“Of course, such news causes concern, especially in the current situation. Therefore, we will deeply analyse this news and monitor the situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Reuters.

Peskov commented on Tuesday about Pashinyan’s assertions, made during an interview with the Italian daily La Repubblica, that because of the Ukraine war Russia was unable to fulfill its security obligations to Armenia and the South Caucasus.

“Russia is an absolutely integral part of this region,” Peskov told reporters Tuesday. “Russia plays a consistent, very important role in stabilizing the situation in this region … and we will continue to play this role.”

It was also telling that the state-sponsored RT news site framed the news as “Russia’s Treaty Partner to Hold Joint Drills with U.S.”