16:06,
YEREVAN, APRIL 13, ARMENPRESS. The session of the Security Council of Armenia was held today chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the PM’s Office told Armenpress.
Issues relating to the formation and strengthening of security environment around Armenia and Artsakh, the ongoing developments and prospects in the region were discussed during the meeting.
Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
15:44, 6 April, 2021
YEREVAN, APRIL 6, ARMENPRESS. Relations between Russia and China are at a high level of mutual trust, but the two countries have no plans for creating a military union, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference following talks with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
“Russian-Chinese relations have achieved the best level in history, but these relations do not pursue the aim of creating a military alliance”, he said.
Lavrov drew attention to current speculations “about military unions not only in connection with Russian-Chinese relations”.
“There have been speculations about pushing ahead with projects for creating a Middle Eastern equivalent of NATO. Lately, some have begun to discuss an ‘Asian NATO’,” he explained.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Influential Kurdish writer, intellectual, and radio personality Kereme Seyad, who played an important role in preserving Kurdish culture for decades, succumbed to illness on Saturday at the age of 83 in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.
He was born in 1938 in the Kurdish Yezidi village of Hako in Armenia’s Tallinn region and went on to complete his education at the University of Yerevan. He later became well-known as a writer for the Riya Teze newspaper and for his enthusiastic presence as the director of the Kurdish section of Radio Yerevan for almost forty years, starting in 1960.
Under his leadership, Radio Yerevan played an important role in keeping the Kurdish language and culture alive in Armenia, just as neighboring Turkish authorities to the west were implementing programs to suppress them.
As a result, untold numbers of Kurds tuned in to the popular radio station to listen to Kurdish music at the radio station that soon became a home for Kurdish singers exiled from Turkey.
One example was prominent Armenian Kurdish artist Egide Cimo, who also played an important cultural role in the region through Radio Yerevan.
When the Armenian government wanted to end the Kurdish broadcasting due to a financial crisis, Seyad and his children walked 12 kilometers every day in protest to prevent the closure.
“When I came to the radio on foot, I was thinking that (since) our Peshmerga (fighters) were walking to deserts, wars, and their homes, then I am going to walk to the radio,” he previously told Kurdistan 24 in an interview, adding that he was working toward “the unity and freedom of the Kurdish people.”
Although twelve other employees resigned from the radio station, Seyad continued to work there until just a few years ago.
Due to his sickness, however, Seyad handed over his work and legacy to his children and stopped showing up at the station he’d helped to define. Both his son Tital and his daughter Leyla have followed in his footsteps to work at Radio Yerevan.
“We were working with my father until 2014 when his health deteriorated, Tital Kereme told Kurdistan 24. “Since then, he has not been working and was at home.”
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani said in a condolence statement released on Sunday that Seyad “worked tirelessly for many years to develop the Kurdish language and literature and in the management of the (Kurdish service of) Yerevan radio.”
“He has played an influential role in disseminating Kurdish dictionaries and language in Armenia and the former Soviet Union,” he continued. “The work and struggle of Kereme Seyad is an example for every patriotic Kurd.”
The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey also offered condolences on his passing on social media.
Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani on Saturday offered his own condolences to the families of both Sayed and a Kurdish academic and former HDP deputy, who recently died at a hospital in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir (Amed).
Kereme Seyad will be buried in his native village of Hako on Tuesday.
Editing by John J. Catherine
17:37, 1 April, 2021
YEREVAN, APRIL 1, ARMENPRESS. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will hold private meetings with Foreign Minister of Armenia Ara Aivazian and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov on April 1, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a press briefing.
“During the meetings issues relating to the bilateral cooperation, and of course, the situation in Nagorno Karabakh, including the implementation process of the November 9, 2020 and January 11, 2021 agreements reached by the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, as well as regional issues will be discussed”, Zakharova said.
The session of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers will take place in Moscow on April 2. The Armenian FM will also attend the session.
Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Armenian, Russian FMs discuss unblocking region’s infrastructures
20:44, 1 April, 2021
YEREVAN, APRIL 1, ARMENPRESS. Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov met with his Armenian counterpart Ara Ayvazian in Moscow in the sidelines of the session of the Foreign Ministers of the CIS member states. ARMENPRESS reports, citing the press service of the Russian MFA, the sides discussed the implementation process of the agreements reached on November 9, 2020 and January 11, 2021 reached between the leaders of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan.
A special reference was made to the humanitarian rapid response issues in Nagorno Karabakh and unblocking of the economic and transport infrastructures of the region.
The Ministers exchanged views on the cooperation between Armenia and Russia, as well as referred to a number of international issues of bilateral interest.
In an interview with the Russian RBK TV, President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian said there might be normal relations between Yerevan and Baku, but he doesn’t know when.
“I can’t say when there will be normal relations between Yerevan and Baku. All this is extremely painful for Armenia, just like it was painful for Azerbaijan. However, before we talk about the normalization of relations or any project, there are very painful issues that need to be solved. There are Armenian prisoners of war in Azerbaijan, but no Azerbaijani prisoners of war in Armenia and Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). This is very painful. If we look at this from the perspective of international law, it is wrong. Before talking about other topics, I believe it would be right for Azerbaijan to return all the prisoners of war and be somewhat humanistic…The families of those prisoners of war are suffering…There are a lot of prisoners of war. Azerbaijan can help these families by providing information or bodies.”
Sarkissian refused to answer the question whether it was wrong that Armenia failed to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh even during the war.
28 Mar, 2021 12:18 / Updated 6 hours ago
FILE PHOTO: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is pictured during an interview with Reuters in Yerevan, Armenia October 13, 2020. © Hayk Baghdasaryan / Photolure via REUTERS
Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s embattled prime minister, has pledged to resign next month and prompt an election, amid pressure in the wake of the disastrous defeat to Azerbaijan in last year’s war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh.
However, the Armenian leader said he has no intention to relinquish power. Instead he plans to remain as acting prime minister during the campaign before the general election, which he plans to contest. Pashinyan, who has been perceived as pro-Western, had earlier promised to hold the ballot on June 20.
Under the Armenian constitution, parliament must be dissolved before an early election is conducted. This in turn requires the prime minister to resign and MPs must not appoint a replacement within two weeks.
Support for the populist leader, who came to power on the back of mass protests in 2018, tanked in the wake of last year’s armed conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. The predominantly Armenian region of neighboring Azerbaijan won de facto independence in the 1990s, with Yerevan’s military and political support.
However, the balance of power shifted over the following decades, and in 2020, Azerbaijan, backed by close ally Turkey, recaptured many of the territories lost at the end of the previous century. The defeat was humiliating for Pashinyan, who came under pressure from political opponents and military commanders to resign.
The snap election is meant to renew his mandate to govern Armenia, but, of course, could also prove that the Armenian people no longer want him at the helm. Pashinyan’s opponents accused the prime minister of stalling instead of taking responsibility for his failures, with some even suggesting that his promise to hold the election may not be fulfilled at all.
Last year’s war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region saw the former country afflict a devastating and decisive defeat against the latter through adept usage of sophisticated military hardware that enabled it to avoid becoming bogged down in a costly war of attrition. By doing so, Baku may well have demonstrated how modern military technology such as armed drones can enable small militaries and nations to punch well above their weight on the battlefield.
Early in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, many Armenian soldiers seemingly expected to fight a similar war to the one they had won in 1994. With their large arsenal of Russian-built T-72 main battle tanks covered by a formidable network of highly formidable S-300 high-altitude air defense missile systems, they apparently thought they were bound to prevail or at the very least effectively hold the line.
Instead, the Armenian forces were utterly decimated by their Azerbaijani adversary, which had adequately prepared itself for tomorrow’s war rather than a repeat of yesterday’s war.
Volunteers and reservists, who wish to join the Karabakh Defence Army to fight against Azerbaijani … [+]
AFP via Getty Images
“While there was some understanding prior to the outbreak of war that a static ‘trench defense’ was precisely what the Azerbaijanis were prepared to fight against, the slow rate of change meant that Armenia ended up with a flood of volunteers trained by veterans of the 1994 war with wooden guns to execute trench defense,” wrote Eric Chan in The Diplomat. “These forces were then correspondingly demoralized by a way of war that had nothing to do with the old Soviet firepower-attrition method that gave Armenia the victory in 1994. The Armenians were fixed and then destroyed – not just in position, but mentally as well.”
Azerbaijan is primarily credited with having achieved this through its use of Israeli-made Harop loitering munitions (also known as “suicide” or “kamikaze” drones) and Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones, which are armed with precision-guided smart munitions, among other weapons.
Recent reportage outlined how Azerbaijan used the Harop drones to devastating effect against Armenian air defenses. The tactic and its execution was genius in its sheer simplicity. Baku converted vintage Soviet-built Antonov An-2 biplanes into remote-controlled decoys that took to the skies and fooled the Armenian S-300s into activating their radars, thus enabling Azerbaijan’s Harops to locate and destroy those high-value targets with pinpoint accuracy and efficiency.
At least six of these expensive systems were destroyed in this manner. Video footage released by Armenian officials this month vividly showed just how devastating such Harop strikes were.
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN – DECEMBER 10: A military truck carries Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial … [+]
Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
With their S-300 aerial umbrella weakened, Armenian ground forces became increasingly vulnerable to more drone strikes. During the conflict, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev credited his armed force’s Turkish TB2s with destroying $1 billion worth of Armenian military equipment. That probably wasn’t an exaggeration since approximately 240 Armenian tanks were reportedly destroyed. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, lost a comparatively paltry estimated 36!
To add insult to injury, Azerbaijani forces also managed to capture at least 39 Armenian tanks and 24 BMPs.
Baku achieved this impressive feat with relatively small expenditures for these high-tech weapons that enhanced its military arsenal over time. The Israeli weapons it procured between 2006 and 2019 cost it an estimated total of $825 million. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recently estimated that between 2016-20 “Israel accounted for 69 per cent of Azerbaijan’s arms imports.” Its comparatively manic acquisition of Turkish equipment saw it spend $123 million in the first nine months of 2020 that preceded the war.
While a lot of money for a country of Azerbaijan’s size, these weapons undoubtedly gave it a crucially important technological edge over its Armenian adversary.
Azerbaijan’s use of such advanced technology to overcome Armenia’s quantitative forces continued right up until the end of that 44-day war. As the Armenians were losing the strategically-important city of Shusha in the Karabakh mountains, Yerevan apparently wanted to pressure Azerbaijan into implementing a ceasefire by using its weapon of last resort, the Russian-built 9K720 short-range Iskander ballistic missile. Armenia fired one of these missiles at Baku. It never impacted since Azerbaijan had another high-tech piece of military hardware up its sleeve. A Barak 8 air defense missile system, which was jointly developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and India’s Defense Research & Development Organization (DRDO), intercepted the Iskander.
A Barak 8ER (extended range) missile during a March 2021 trial in Israel. Photo by IAI.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI)
A Russian-brokered ceasefire ended the war following devastating territorial losses in the Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia. It may take some years of retrospective analysis to conclusively determine just how substantively Azerbaijan may have been among the first to demonstrate how in this 21st century, small nations can increasingly deploy such advanced weapons systems to compensate for their size and decisively prevail against otherwise equal or even more powerful opponents.
In a recent article in The Jerusalem Post, journalist Seth Frantzman questioned if Azerbaijan’s use of advanced weapons, particularly those Israeli-built loitering munitions, ultimately “resulted in fewer casualties for both sides, either by hastening Azerbaijan’s victory, forcing Russia to come in as a peacemaker, or reducing civilian casualties by providing better precision guidance.”
While Baku undoubtedly prevailed in the conflict, it was far from cost-free. By its own calculations, disclosed last November, Azerbaijan lost at least 2,783 soldiers compared to Armenia’s reported 2,317. Despite these losses, Frantzman may well have made an important point.
After all, had the war become one of yesteryear; hence one of attrition fought on bloody static fronts, then it could have become a repeat of the First Nagorno-Karabakh war which dragged on for six years and, according to a 1994 Human Rights Watch report, left at least 25,000 soldiers and civilians dead on both sides (in other words at least fivefold the number lost in the 2020 war) and displaced one million.
Whatever the case ultimately proves to be, it increasingly seems that last year Azerbaijan aptly demonstrated how small nations cannot be underestimated in modern-day wars.
13:20,
YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. So far, there’ve been around 300 “double positive” cases of COVID-19, Health Minister Anahit Avanesyan said, stressing that now they can’t definitively say whether or not these are re-infections or cases when the virus hasn’t completely withdrawn from a person’s body.
“To determine this, these cases are studied and analyzed, the results will be available a bit later,” she said, noting that some experts argue that in order for a case to constitute a re-infection it should happen at least 90 days after the initial infection.
Avanesyan once again called on the population to be vigilant and maintain epidemiological guidelines due to the rising infection rates in Armenia. She warned that hospitals don’t have an unlimited capacity.
There are 12 hospitals in Armenia currently treating COVID-19 patients.
On March 18, the Armenian health authorities reported 1024 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan