Author: Ophelia Vardapetian

                                        Monday, 


Opposition Bloc Proposes Different Probe Of Karabakh War

        • Gayane Saribekian

Armenia - Deputies from the opposition Hayastan alliance attend a session of the 
National Assembly, Yerevan, January 17, 2022.


After deciding to boycott a parliamentary inquiry into the 2020 war in 
Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia’s leading opposition group has called on the National 
Assembly to set up another, non-partisan body for that purpose.

The ruling Civil Contract party’s parliamentary group initiated earlier this 
month the establishment of an ad hoc commission that will examine the causes of 
Armenia’s defeat in the war, assess the Armenian government’s and military’s 
actions and look into what had been done for national defense before the 
hostilities.

The parliamentary majority appointed seven of the eleven members of the 
commission. It offered the opposition Hayastan and Pativ Unem alliances to name 
the four other members.

Both alliances officially rejected the offer, saying that the commission will be 
controlled by pro-government lawmakers and therefore cannot be objective. The 
commission held its first meeting last week despite the opposition boycott.

A senior lawmaker from Hayastan, Artsvik Minasian, said on Monday that his bloc 
has drafted legislation paving the way for the creation of an alternative 
commission that would consist of nine members who are not lawmakers and not 
affiliated with any party.

Under the Hayastan bill, Civil Contract and the opposition minority in the 
National Assembly would each appoint four members of the proposed body. The 
remaining member would be handpicked by Armenia’s human rights ombudswoman, 
Kristine Grigorian.

“If we want an impartial inquiry and revelation [of the truth,] the model 
proposed by us is one of the best ones,” said Minasian. He claimed that its 
rejection by Civil Contract would be a further indication that the authorities 
are not interested in answering lingering questions about the disastrous war.

Armen Khachatrian, a senior pro-government lawmaker, dismissed the Hayastan 
initiative as “not serious and not appropriate.” He said that the commission set 
up by the ruling party is objective enough.

Virtually all opposition groups hold Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian responsible 
for the outcome of the six-week war that left at least 3,800 Armenian soldiers 
dead.

For his part, Pashinian has blamed former Presidents Robert Kocharian and Serzh 
Sarkisian, who lead Hayastan and Pativ Unem respectively, for the defeat. 
Kocharian ruled Armenia from 1998-2008, while Sarkisian, his successor, lost 
power more than two years before the outbreak of the fighting.



‘Many Armenians’ Keen To Leave Ukraine As Fighting Rages On

        • Naira Bulghadarian

UKRAINE - People walk as they flee from Ukraine to Hungary, after Russia 
launched a massive military operation against Ukraine, at a border crossing in 
Tiszabecs, February 27, 2022.


Many Armenians are desperate to flee Ukraine in the face of Russia’s continuing 
military assault, a leader of the local Armenian community said on Monday.

Norik Grigorian, the head of the Kyiv branch of the Union of Armenians of 
Ukraine, confirmed that getting out of the country is becoming increasingly 
difficult and dangerous. Neither he nor the Armenian Foreign Ministry could say 
how many Armenians have taken refuge in neighboring states or in Armenia.

The ministry announced on Saturday that Armenian nationals do not need Schengen 
visas to enter Ukraine’s European Union neighbors: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and 
Romania. It also said Armenia is ready to receive them and is now exploring 
“other options for evacuating them.”

“We are advising everyone to stay put until things stabilize because traveling 
is now harder than staying,” Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service from Kyiv. 
“At the same time, we try to escort those people who decide to get out.”

“On the way to the [western Ukrainian] cities of Vinnitsa, Khmelnitsky and 
Ternopol we provide them with accommodation for one night so that they can keep 
moving towards the border in the morning, after the curfew,” he said.


UKRAINE - People sleep in the improvised bomb shelter in a sports center, which 
can accommodate up to 2000 people, in Mariupol, Ukraine, late Sunday, Feb. 27, 
2022

Estimates of the number of ethnic Armenians who lived in Ukraine before the 
Russian invasion vary from 100,000 to 400,000. Only half of them are said to 
hold Ukrainian passports.

Some Armenians live in the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk regions run by 
pro-Russian regimes.

According to Father Narek, an Armenian priest based there, up to 100 local 
Armenian families have fled to neighboring Russia over the past week. “Their men 
came back because their departure is strictly prohibited [due to a general 
mobilization,]” he said by phone.

Many others, he said, also remain in the two self-proclaimed republics involved 
in the Russian offensive. “People stay in their homes. They run to bomb shelters 
when air raid sirens go off,” added the clergyman.



Armenian Public Debt Keeps Rising

        • Sargis Harutyunyan

Armenia - The main government building in Yerevan, March 6, 2021.


Armenia’s public debt has increased by more than 15 percent over the past year 
to a new record high of almost $9.3 billion, official figures show.

It was equivalent to an estimated 63.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product, up 
from 59 percent in 2017 and just 18 percent in 2007.

The debt-to-GDP ratio began rising significantly two years ago amid a recession 
caused by the coronavirus pandemic and compounded by the war in 
Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian economy shrunk by 7.6 percent in 2020, forcing 
the government to resort to additional external borrowing to make up for a major 
shortfall in its tax revenue.

The government and the Central Bank borrowed even more (about $1.26 billion) 
from mostly external sources last year, despite renewed economic growth and a 
major rise in tax revenue. The new loans included Armenia’s fourth Eurobond, 
worth $750 million, issued in January 2021.

Arshaluys Margarian, head of the Armenian Finance Ministry’s debt management 
division, downplayed the rising debt, saying that it reflects a global trend and 
does not put financial stability at risk.

“Our economy will remain deficit-driven for a long time,” Margarian told 
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “How can the debt fall if the economy is to keep 
growing in physical terms?”

“The most important thing is the pace of economic growth,” he said. “If the 
economy grows faster than the debt, then let [the debt] grow, for God’s sake. 
That will only benefit the country.”

Finance Minister Tigran Khachatrian expressed confidence in September that the 
ongoing economic recovery will allow the government to cut the public debt to 
60.2 percent of GDP by the end of 2022. The International Monetary Fund forecast 
afterwards, however, that this is unlikely to happen before 2024.

This and other fiscal targets set by the government are now called into question 
by fallout from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian warned on Friday that severe economic sanctions imposed on Moscow by 
the West could also hit Armenia and other ex-Soviet states dependent on trade 
with Russia.


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