Category: 2023

On December 15, Armenia and Russia signed a contract on modernizing and extending the lifespan of Armenia's Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) until 2036. 

The renovations will be carried out by Rustatom Service JSC, a subsidiary of Russia's state nuclear energy company Rosatom, and will cost the Armenian government $65 million.

The deal is another reminder of the vast extent of Russia's influence over Armenia's infrastructure and economy amid Yerevan's efforts to politically distance itself from Moscow. 

Metsamor plays a significant role in Armenia's energy landscape, contributing an average of 31 percent of the country's yearly electricity output.

It is the only nuclear power plant in the South Caucasus, located about 30 kilometers west of Yerevan. It consists of two units, Metsamor-1 and Metsamor-2, activated in 1976 and 1980, respectively. In 1989, the plant was shut down due to safety concerns after the devastating earthquake in Spitak in December 1988. In 1995, Unit 2 was reactivated due to energy shortages in Armenia, and since then has been the only nuclear unit in operation.

In 2021, Rosatom repaired and upgraded the NPP to operate until 2026. The modernization was implemented under a loan agreement signed between Armenia and Russia in 2015. 

Under the new agreement, Rosatom will help to extend the lifespan of Unit-2 until 2036, after which it will be decommissioned. 

The upgrading operations will be financed in the form of a "budgetary loan" provided by the Armenian government to the state-owned plant's management, which will subsequently enter into a contract with Rosatom. In 2023-2026, Rosatom will modernize Metsamor NPP in close cooperation with Armenian specialists.

As the reactor will be decommissioned in 2036, the Armenian government intends to build a new nuclear unit at Metsamor. Different estimates assert that the construction of a new nuclear power plant or unit will take 6-10 years, which means that construction works must be started in the next couple years.

It appears those construction works will be implemented by Rosatom, judging by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk's remark on December 15 that negotiations were underway regarding new nuclear power units. 

Overwhelming energy dependence on Russia 

The new Metsamor deal comes at a complicated time in Armenian-Russian relations. Resentment against Russia is high in Armenia Azerbaijan's military takeover – apparently with Moscow's blessing – of Nagorno-Karabakh in September.

Despite persistent efforts to diversify its political alliances and build closer ties with the West, Armenia's economy remains overwhelmingly dependent on Russia. Russia is Armenia's largest trade partner, and Armenia is a member of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). 

And then there's energy dependence.

Russia supplies 87.5 percent of Armenia's gas (the rest comes from Iran), and Gazprom Armenia, the local subsidiary of the Russian state gas company, owns all of the country's gas distribution infrastructure. 

Armenia says it generates 98 percent of the electricity it needs but that claim hides even more dependence. 

That electricity is generated by hydropower and thermal plants and by the Metsamor NPP. Metsamor is entirely fueled by uranium imported from Russia while thermal power plants depend on (largely Russian) natural gas. 

"Our self-sufficiency depends on the countries from which we import the gas and the uranium that operate our thermal and nuclear power plants. And when our government officials speak about our self-sufficiency, why do they forget to say how we maintain it?" energy expert Armen Manvelyan told the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), stressing that over 70 percent of Armenia's electricity depends on Russia.

And Armenia's energy demands keep growing. In 2022, Armenia's imports of Russian natural gas increased by 6.1 percent from the previous year, reaching 2.6 billion cubic meters. 

Iran's ambassador to Armenia, Mehdi Sobhani, recently mused about the possibility of tripling or quadrupling Tehran's gas exports to Armenia. But such a move would require Russia's consent and facilitation, as Gazprom controls the gas pipeline to Iran.

Armenia is exploring the possibility of obtaining small modular nuclear reactors from the United States, France, and South Korea as part of its efforts to diversify its energy sector. But so far concrete progress on this front remains elusive.

By Lilit Shahverdyan via Eurasianet.org

https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/Armenia-Russia-Sign-Key-Deal-for-Metsamor-Nuclear-Plant-Modernization.html

Larry Luxner

His haunting French rendition of “La Yiddishe Mama” is legendary, as is his spirited performance of “Hava Nagila” in a duet with Algerian Jewish singer Enrico Macias. In 1967, he recorded the song “Yerushalayim” as a tribute to Israel’s Six-Day War victory.

Yet Charles Aznavour, a diminutive singer and songwriter later nicknamed the “Frank Sinatra of France,” wasn’t Jewish. Born in Paris into a Christian Armenian family that prized culture, the young tenor learned basic Yiddish while growing up in the city’s Jewish quarter. And when the Nazis occupied Paris in 1940, the Aznavourians (their original surname, before Charles shortened it) risked their lives to save Jews from deportation.

Aznavour died in October 2018 at the age of 94. During his nearly 80-year career, he recorded over 1,400 songs in seven languages, sold around 200 million records and appeared in more than 90 films. His duets with other stars, including “Une vie d’amour” with Mirelle Mathieu, and his witty multilingual lyrics — the 1963 hit “Formidable” is a prime example — thrilled audiences worldwide. In 1998, Aznavour was voted Time magazine’s entertainer of the 20th century.

May 22, 2024, will mark the 100th anniversary of Aznavour’s birth, and many events are planned next year to celebrate that milestone. A violent conflict in September between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan has made the rollout more difficult, but eventually, his admirers hope to inaugurate a large museum and cultural center in Yerevan to honor the various facets of Aznavour’s life — including the warm ties he cultivated with
Israel and Jews.

“We started to work on this idea while my father was still among us,” said Nicolas Aznavour, 46, son of the famous chansonniere and co-founder of the nonprofit Aznavour Foundation. “He recorded the audio guide, so he’s the narrator of his own story.”

The foundation occupies a large building overlooking the Cascades, a series of giant limestone stairways that form one of Yerevan’s most prominent landmarks. A forerunner of the charity, the Aznavour for Armenia Association, was established in 1988 following the massive earthquake that struck Armenia — then a Soviet republic — killing 25,000 people, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless and propelling Aznavour’s philanthropic work.
Since then, the family has raised money for humanitarian projects throughout Armenia, while also funding cancer and Alzheimer’s research and aiding victims of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.

After Armenia’s bruising 44-day war in 2020 with Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, the foundation delivered 175 tons of food, clothing, medical supplies and other aid to more than 42,000 ethnic Armenians displaced by the fighting.

Upon completion, one room of the future museum will contain the nearly 300 prizes Aznavour received from around the world during his lifetime. That includes the Raoul Wallenberg Award, presented to Aznavour in 2017 by Israel’s former president, Reuven Rivlin, in Jerusalem, in recognition of his family’s efforts to protect Jews and others in Paris during World War II.

Aznavour’s son was present when his father, then 93, received the medal from Rivlin on behalf of the singer’s parents and his older sister Aida, who is now 100.

“It’ll be an important part of the exhibit,” he said. “My grandparents, who had fled the Armenian genocide in Turkey, settled in France but ultimately wanted to go to the U.S. And when they saw what was happening to the Jews, they could not stay idle.”

That compassion is what led the family to shelter Jewish acquaintances in their small, three-room apartment at 22 rue de Navarin, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The eventual museum will consist of 10 rooms, taking visitors on a journey that begins with the Armenian genocide and continues with Aznavour’s early life in Paris.

“We want to tell the story of their resistance, how they helped not only Jews but also Armenian soldiers who were recruited by the Germans against their will,” said Tatev Sargsyan, chief operating officer of the Aznavour Foundation.

According to a 2016 book by Israeli researcher Yair Auron, “Righteous Saviors and Fighters,” Aznavour and his sister would help burn the Nazi uniforms of Armenian deserters and dispose of the ashes. They also hid members of a French underground resistance movement who were being pursued by the Gestapo — something the modest Aznavour rarely talked about.

“It’ll be more of an immersive experience — something that you feel rather than just see,” Nicolas Aznavour said of the planned 32,000-square-foot museum. Hundreds of artifacts besides the medals and awards will be displayed, including Aznavour’s clothing, his favorite sunglasses and dozens of posters advertising movies in which he starred. (Among them:

“The Tin Drum,” a 1979 German thriller in which Aznavour plays a kind Jewish toy vendor who kills himself after the Nazis vandalize his store and burn down the local synagogue.)
The foundation has formed a partnership with the French government to establish a French Institute within the future center, which will offer a wide range of cultural and educational activities. Among other things, there will be music lessons with hands-on experience in a recording studio. Artists will have the opportunity to perform live on stage.

In addition, experts will teach courses in film, theater and production. These classes will include film screening, featuring some of the 90 movies in which Aznavour himself starred.
Last April, the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva renamed a municipal park after Aznavour, in the presence of Mayor Rami Greenberg and Arman Hakobian — Armenia’s ambassador to Israel — as well as officials of the French Embassy and the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

“During World War II, the Aznavourian family saved numerous Jewish lives,” said community leader Artiom Chernamorian, founder of a nonprofit group called Nairi Union of Armenians in Petah Tikva. The suburb is home to a sizable Armenian ethnic community. “This gesture symbolizes the unbreakable bond between the Armenian and Jewish people, two nations that have endured unspeakable tragedy.”

Yet the influential singer wasn’t shy about calling out his Jewish friends over Israel’s refusal to officially recognize the Ottoman Turkish genocide of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I. Nor did he hold back criticism of Israel’s growing friendship with energy-rich Azerbaijan, which since 1993 has been ruled by the Aliyev family dynasty and is home to some 15,000 Jews.

“I think it’s a complex situation,” Nicholas Aznavour said. “We have friends who totally support recognition of the Armenian genocide. But more than the Turkish reaction, there’s a political reality, and the reality is that the interests of Israel align with those of Azerbaijan.”

Politics aside, that’s a “dangerous compromise,” he warned. “In the long term, it’s a bad strategy, because when you align yourself with dictatorships, it’s like putting one foot in the grave.”

http://www.jewishexponent.com/new-museum-in-armenia-will-tell-story-of-charles-aznavours-love-for-jews/

Armenia's possible exit from the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is being discussed more and more actively as differences grow between Yerevan and Moscow.

Many in Armenia are wondering what the point is of remaining in a military alliance that has demonstrated its unwillingness to protect the country. 

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has repeatedly denied claims, including by Russian officials, of an imminent change in Armenia's foreign policy vector, but that has not stopped speculation as to how the country might leave the CSTO and what would come next. Representatives of the authorities are themselves musing about this prospect. 

 "There is of course the idea of Euro-integration in Armenia, but there is also the idea of becoming a country with non-bloc status, so there's a wide range of options. We are listening to civil society and trying to figure out what the best tools are for ensuring Armenia's security and development," Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan said at a forum in Brussels on November 10 titled, The Strategic Future of Armenia: Armenia-Europe.

Fifteen Armenian public organizations recently released a statement criticizing Russia for, as they put it, interfering in Armenia's internal affairs. The statement demands that the Armenian government expel Russia's 102nd military base, ban Russian broadcast media, and begin the process of ending the country's membership in the CSTO. 

Growing dissatisfaction with Russia

The CSTO, which also includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Belarus, is one of the main causes of the growing Armenian resentment toward Russia. 

The bloc, which is, theoretically, bound to come to the aid of a member state when it is attacked, took practically no action in September last year when Azerbaijani troops invaded border areas and took up positions on strategic heights inside Armenia.   

Since then, Armenia's approach to the CSTO, and to Russia, has been increasingly confrontational. Yerevan has reduced its participation in the bloc to an absolute minimum. Over the past year, it has snubbed CSTO meetings at practically every level and has reassigned its representative in the organization to other work and left his post vacant.

At the same time, Armenia has welcomed more intensive cooperation with the EU, which at the start of this year deployed a civilian monitoring mission to the Azerbaijani border with the aim of supporting stability there. 

This step elicited a sharply negative reaction from the Russian authorities, who claimed the mission's purpose was to "confront Russia geopolitically" in the South Caucasus region.

Such rhetoric from Moscow has done nothing to stop the growing cooperation between Yerevan and Brussels, including in the military sphere. 

At the summit of EU foreign ministers on December 11, it was announced that the EU would review the possibility of rendering military aid to Armenia through the European Peace Fund.

It was also announced that the EU mission in Armenia would increase the number of its monitors from 138 to 209. 

Another sore spot for Armenia is Russia's alleged failure to deliver weapons that Yerevan says it paid millions of dollars for.  

The Armenian authorities have no plans to sue Russia and instead seek to solve the matter in an "atmosphere of partnership," Deputy Defence Minister Hrachya Sargsyan told a briefing on December 4. 

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan recently proposed resolving the dispute through Russia canceling part of Yerevan's overall debt to Moscow. That total debt amounts to about $280 million, according to the Armenian Finance Ministry's latest calculations. (Armenia has not released precise figures on how much money Russia owes it for undelivered weapons.) 

Scenarios for leaving the CSTO

Most of the analysts Eurasianet spoke to see Armenia exiting the CSTO as a logical possible outcome of the current strained relations between Armenia and Russia. 

The head of the Research Center on Security Policy in Yerevan, Areg Kochinyan, says that Armenia could withdraw from the CSTO after approving a national security strategy that stipulates "non-bloc status" for the country. A new national security strategy is currently being drafted, and it's unknown now whether it will contain such a provision. 

If the national security strategy were amended so, "It would mean that Armenia has decided not to participate in any military bloc or alliance and therefore it would have to leave the CSTO. But at the same time it would mean that the country would not seek to become part of any other collective defense bloc," Kochinyan told Eurasianet. "I think this position would be more acceptable for Russia and the other regional powers, Iran and Turkey."

Yerevan-based political analyst David Arutyunov doesn't find it difficult to imagine Armenia leaving the CSTO.  

"In the context of the whole scope of Armenia's close relations with Russia, including in the economic sphere and the presence of the Russian military base here, leaving the CSTO is a relatively easy matter," Arutyunov told Eurasianet, adding that another crisis could provide the final impetus for quitting the bloc. 

He said the Armenian authorities have deftly managed to achieve domestic political aims by directing public discontent over the country's security problems towards Russia and the CSTO. 

"If something like the crisis of September 2022 happens again and causes internal political ructions in Armenia, it's possible that the Armenian government will resort to leaving the CSTO" in a bid to deflect criticism. 

What might Armenia's "non-bloc status" mean?  

Areg Kochinyan, of the Research Center on Security Policy, believes that a "non-bloc status" could open up opportunities for expanding Armenia's defense and military-industrial cooperation with various countries.

"We're talking not just about the West, but also other countries like India, that produce weapons. Armenia can enhance its relations with them even to the level of strategic partnership," he said. 

David Arutyunov believes that it's too early to speak about any real prospect of Armenia being outside of any military-political alliances.

"For now all this talk is theoretical. There are no real discussions on realizing this in practice. And even so, the talk pertains to the CSTO specifically, while bilateral relations with Russia will remain in any case – alongside contacts with the West," Arutyunov said.

The head of the Armenian Institute for Resilience and Statecraft, Gevorg Melikyan, is doubtful that the Armenian authorities really intend to leave the CSTO and declare non-bloc status.

"I don't see any such clear policy or strategy. For now, it's a matter of the Armenian government's desire to make an impression on Western partners to extract some kind of security guarantees. Since there are none [such guarantees], the Armenian government will try to convince Western partners to treat Armenia like they would treat any other anti-Russian country and not accuse it of maintaining contacts with Russia in the security sphere because it remains in the CSTO," Melikyan told Eurasianet. 

Arshaluis Mgdesyan via Eurasianet.org

https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/Armenia-Considers-Departure-from-Russia-Led-Military-Bloc.html

TEHRAN- The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Friday that six Iranian citizens who had been imprisoned in Armenia have been repatriated to Iran. 

Following the follow-up of the Islamic Republic of Iran's embassy in Yerevan and with the assistance of the Armenian government, the six Iranian nationals were transferred to Iran under the framework of an agreement on the transfer of sentenced persons after undergoing legal procedures.
 
The repatriation of Iranian citizens is the second such action taken this year, with an Armenian national who had been imprisoned in Iran also being transferred to Yerevan on December 19.

The repatriation of these individuals underscores cooperation between Iran and Armenia in the field of judicial matters.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held a phone call with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, diplomatic sources said Friday.

Sources said two top diplomats talked about peace negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Fidan highlighted the importance of signing the peace agreement “as soon as possible,” the Turkish sources told the media.

Türkiye is a close ally of Azerbaijan and maintains good relations with Moscow.

Normalization of Türkiye’s own relations with Armenia also hinges on Azerbaijan’s ties to Armenia, Turkish officials have earlier said.

The South Caucasus neighbors have fought two wars in the past 30 years over the Azerbaijani enclave Karabakh, but staged a prisoner exchange this month and issued a joint statement saying they want to normalize relations and reach a peace deal.

Azerbaijan sent troops to Karabakh on Sept. 19 and after just one day of fighting, the Armenian separatist forces that had controlled the disputed region for three decades surrendered and agreed to reintegrate with Baku.

MOSCOW. Dec 22 (Interfax) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan spoke on Friday to discuss bilateral and international issues, including the situation in the South Caucasus.

"The sides exchanged opinions on pressing issues of the bilateral and international agendas with emphasis on the current situation in the South Caucasus, taking into account the special role of regional countries in assisting with the normalization between Azerbaijan and Armenia," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement published on its website on Friday.

The sides touched on "certain aspects of Russian-Turkish cooperation, including the schedule of upcoming top- and high-level contacts," the ministry said.

Earlier, Lavrov also spoke by phone with Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and discussed the regional agenda and agreements reached by the two countries' presidents during talks on December 7.

https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/97922/