By PanARMENIAN

This article was first published on OC Media. An edited version is republished here under a content partnership agreement. 

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Armenia and Georgia following the news that Alexey Navalny, 47, well-known Russian opposition figure and Putin's long term critic died in prison under suspicious circumstances on February 16, 2024.

In December 2020, Navalany was poisoned with what was later confirmed by German doctors to be a military-grade nerve agent from the Novichok family of chemical weapons. The opposition politician survived the poisoning and, after receiving treatment in Germany, decided to return to Russia, despite knowing he would be arrested if not on the spot, then at a later time. On January 17, 2021, Navalny was arrested after landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. At the time of his death, he was serving a 19-year prison sentence in a maximum-security prison north of the Arctic Circle, nicknamed the “Polar Wolf” prison and notorious for its ill-reputation over the treatment of prisoners serving time there.

As such, when the Russian Penitentiary Service announced Navalny's death, claiming the opposition politician died of thromboembolism or a dislodged blood cot, questions over the actual cause of death and Kremlin's involvement in it spread quickly.

That his family and team have not been able to retrieve the body of Navalny puts authorities under the spotlight over suspicions that they are trying to cover up the real reason behind his death. According to Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson:

In a separate interview with TV Rain, Yarmush said: “There’s no doubt that this murder was planned. We don’t currently have any information except for the colony’s official confirmation of his death.”

When Navalny's mother showed up at the morgue on February 19, she and the team of lawyers accompanying her were prevented from seeing Navalny's body:

Alexey’s mother and his lawyers arrived at the morgue early in the morning. They were not allowed to go in. One of the lawyers was literally pushed out. When the staff was asked if Alexey’s body was there, they did not answer

— Кира Ярмыш (@Kira_Yarmysh) 

On February 20, Yarmush wrote, “The investigators told the lawyers and Alexey's mother that they would not give them the body. The body will be under some sort of ‘chemical examination’ for another 14 days.”

Meanwhile, scores of Russians continue to express their grief at home, even at the cost of being arrested.

At the time of writing this story, at least 396 people have been detained at events across 39 Russian cities since Navalny's death, according to the Russian human rights group OVD-Info.

For Russians living abroad, including in Armenia and Georgia, it has been easier to demonstrate their anger.

In the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, as well as in the city of Batumi and in Armenia's capital, Yerevan, Russians chanted Navalny’s name, anti-war and anti-Putin slogans.

“I’m angry; I’m mostly angry, then sad,” one demonstrator named Nikolay told the news outlet OC Media, adding that he was grateful that in Armenia, he was able to express his feelings openly.

“We expected it, but the feelings are still anger, rage, grief,” said another demonstrator, Mikhail Yershov.

In Tbilisi, a demonstration was held outside the Russian Interests Section at the Swiss Embassy. Georgia severed diplomatic relations with Russia after the 2008 August War. Navalny was among many Russians who supported the invasion at the time, however he publicly apologized for it five years later.

Memorial to Alexei Navalny in Tbilisi near the Russian Interests Section at the Swiss Embassy. People have been coming for the third day to lay flowers in memory of the politician after the news of Navalny’s death in the colony. Activists assembled an installation in the shape of a heart made of flowersç Video: TV Rain

One protester who asked to remain anonymous told OC Media that Navalny’s death came as a shock to her.

“What brought me [here]? It’s shock because everything has its limits […] he was killed, like Boris Nemtsov,” she said, adding she was worried for the fate of other political prisoners in Russia.

Boris Nemtsov was a liberal politician and ardent critic of Vladimir Putin who was gunned down in the street near the Kremlin in Moscow in 2015.

Despite the growing rift between Armenia and Russia, Armenian authorities have so far remained silent, as have those in Azerbaijan.

In Azerbaijan, there was just one memorial reported:

Hüseyn Javid was a renowned Azerbaijani poet and playwright of the early 20th century who was a victim of Stalin's repressions in 1937, and who died in Siberia as a result.

On February 20, ambassadors of the United Kingdom and the United States also paid tribute to Navalny by the same statue:

In Georgia, President Salome Zourabichvili was quick to speak out, calling Navalny’s death a “tragedy for all democracy and human rights defenders.”

Mamuka Mdinaradze, the ruling Georgian Dream party's parliamentary leader, said Navalny was Putin's latest victim when asked a question by a journalist before moving to complain about Georgia's own politics, including the opposition United Nation Movement's time in power before 2012, when prisoner deaths weren't unheard of.

The speaker of parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, preferred not to comment when asked a similar question.

Opposition leaders in Georgia were more outspoken.

The United National Movement, in a statement, praised Navalny for returning back to Russia “to fight against Putin’s dictatorship and murderous regime” despite the danger to his life.

The party’s founder and Georgia's former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who is currently serving a prison sentence for abuse of power, wrote, “Navalny is gone. Am I the next one on Putin’s death row?”

The leader of the opposition Droa Party, Elene Khoshtaria, wrote on X that “Navalny’s death was a testament to the true, brutal, callous nature of Russia and Putin.”

Giorgi Gakharia, former Prime Minister and now leader of the For Georgia party, expressed condolences to Navalny’s family and friends on X, adding the opposition politician's death was “a poignant symbol of Russia’s enduring modernized totalitarianism.”

https://globalvoices.org/2024/02/20/anger-and-grief-as-russians-in-armenia-and-georgia-mourn-navalnys-death/

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met in Munich on February 17 with the mediation of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. 

According to Azerbaijan's APA news agency, Scholz left the room at some point and the meeting continued in bilateral format. 

Afterwards, the sides expressed satisfaction with the meeting but offered few specifics on a way forward. 

It was the first meeting between the two leaders since last July, though they did have a brief encounter at a CIS summit in December. 

One of the main reasons for their failure to meet has been disagreement over who should mediate, particularly since Azerbaijan's seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh in September and the exodus of the region's Armenian population. 

Armenia has favored mediation by the EU and U.S. while Azerbaijan first expressed preference for authoritarian regional powers Russia and Turkey, and then began rejecting all outside mediation. 

The sides have met in bilateral format several times, however, to discuss border delimitation in November and agree a prisoner exchange in December.

Armenia has not explicitly rejected bilateral talks on a comprehensive peace deal, though its preference for Western mediation is evident as it seeks closer ties with the EU and U.S. and attempts to move away from its traditional strategic partner Russia. 

The Aliyev-Pashinyan-Scholz meeting took place just four days after Azerbaijan killed four Armenian soldiers in what it called a "revenge operation" for the wounding of an Azerbaijani serviceman. 

And the previous day, February 16, Pashinyan had said that his government's "analysis" showed that Azerbaijan was preparing for a full-scale war. 

After the meeting, on February 18, Pashinyan said the two countries' foreign ministers would meet soon for peace talks. It is not clear whether or not any mediators will be present.

Aliyev, meanwhile, called his meeting with Pashinyan "constructive and useful." He declared that there is "de facto peace in the region" and expressed readiness to sign a peace treaty. 

At the same time, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry in a February 18 statement reiterated Baku's demand that Armenia revise its constitution and other laws to remove all reference to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Following the Munich meeting, Olaf Scholz stated that the sides agreed to resolve their differences "without violence." No details about any specific agreements were made public. The meeting took place within the framework of the Munich Security Conference. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Aliyev and Pashinyan separately, expressing support for the peace process. 

While the two countries' leaders maintain that the main principles of the peace treaty have been agreed, the sides voice disagreement over almost all of the parts of the deal, including the opening of the transport links and border delimitation/demarcation. 

The mentioned principles include Armenia and Azerbaijan recognizing each other's territorial integrity, with the latest USSR and Almaty declaration maps being used for the demarcation of the borders and opening of the regional infrastructure based on the respective country's legislation and jurisdiction. Baku, however, demands a corridor through Armenia connecting mainland Azerbaijan with the Nakhchivan to be controlled by Russian border troops and without Armenian customs or border checks. 

It was a deadly accident in the rugged Caucasus mountain region south of Russia.   

 After September’s lightning incursions by the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan into the contested territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, over 100,000 Karabakhi Armenians were fleeing their homes towards the safety of neighboring Armenia.  

There was only one road out and that was now packed with vehicles – a traffic jam from hell. Among those in the bumper-to-bumper queue were nearly 100 employees of the HALO Trust, the landmine clearance charity I head, and who were fleeing with their families. 

As the traffic jam out of Nagorno-Karabakh shuddered once again to a halt, a woman traveling in an SUV got out of the back door to get some air.    

Behind the car was a truck. Its driver stepped out of his cab. Somehow, his handbrake disengaged, and the truck rolled forward. The woman was crushed and died. 

Also in the car were the woman’s husband, a senior HALO deminer, and their two children. Our colleague had to put his children in another car and drive the dead body of his wife into Armenia.   

Stories of loss and tragedy were all too common as a whole population fled, with reports of hundreds dead or injured following an explosion at a fuel depot near the largest city, Stepanakert. Most of the people in the huge column of vehicles were also hungry and exhausted. For almost a year, Nagorno-Karabakh had been blockaded. Grocery shops had empty shelves and a lack of fuel meant vital farm machinery was idle; crops were rotting in the fields. People had to queue for many hours to get the simplest of things such as bread.   

HALO has been working in Nagorno-Karabakh since 2000. Our main job was to clear landmines in the fertile soil which once grew grain, or boasted pomegranate orchards. These areas where tanks and armored personnel carriers had done their deadly work were littered with mines.     

We also made roads and schools safe so teachers could explain the dangers of unexploded munitions to the next generation. Over a two-decade period, HALO cleared deadly mines and other ordnance from over 300 square kilometers of land (that’s about the size of 30,000 Premier League soccer pitches) across Nagorno-Karabakh.    

Our work aimed to restore some normality and make life safe and enjoyable for everyone. It’s not really normal to worry about exploding munitions when you go for a walk or play games.  

The conflict had simmered for decades after the end of the first war in 1994 but Azerbaijan resumed full-scale hostilities in September 2020, with a surprise air and land attack. We immediately focused our efforts on clearing the most populous areas of deadly munitions, including Stepanakert.   

But since September’s exodus of its Armenian population, all of HALO’s work in Nagorno-Karabakh has now been stopped. Our staff and their families, along with the over 100,000 people living there, have left. As a result of the deteriorated security situation, they have all been effectively deprived of their right to their land and their homes.  

Armenia is a poor country and remains extremely dependent on Russia for trade and energy supplies, although it has maintained good relations with the West as well.  

As I write, it’s unclear whether the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will be able to return to their homes. At the moment, it doesn’t look promising. Instead, they are likely to settle in the State of their ethnic kin and perhaps hope that one day things will change. Either way, they and the Armenian government will need considerable Western aid to ease their transition.  

The death of my colleague’s wife was bad enough — two other HALO employees were also killed around the same time in the fuel depot explosion. But over 100,000 other people have also lost their homes and their land. In the words of a senior HALO staffer who worked in Nagorno-Karabakh;

 “They have left their lives behind. They have lost their past, and maybe their future as well.”  

Major General James Cowan left the British Army to join the HALO Trust as its chief executive in 2015. The landmine clearance charity was founded in 1988 in Afghanistan and achieved global prominence when Princess Diana visited its operations in Angola. Under James’s leadership HALO has increased its global workforce by a third to some 11,000 people and expanded from operations in 17 countries to 29. The organization’s work has saved the lives and limbs of more than two million people.  

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

https://cepa.org/article/the-plight-of-nagorno-karabakh/

On February 18, RA Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan met with the Deputy Prime Minister of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Ayman al-Safadi, within the framework of the Munich Security Forum.

During the meeting, reference was made to the activation of high-level political dialogue, mutual visits, and further expansion of intensive cooperation between the two countries in various fields. Exchanges and additional opportunities in the field of education were noted with satisfaction.

The Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Jordan exchanged ideas on regional issues. Ararat Mirzoyan presented RA approaches to critical problems regulating relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

At the meeting, reference was made to the Armenian quarter in Jerusalem.

It said the deal will "significantly enhance" its presence and growth opportunities "within a fast-growing and attractive market".

BOG said the Armenian market has similar characteristics to Georgia, and pointed to significant upside potential from leveraging the group's existing customer focus and digital/payments capabilities.

Mel Carvill, chairman of the board of directors of Bank of Georgia, said: "This transaction is a significant milestone for the group and a new chapter in our strategic development. Through Ameriabank we are set to enter Armenia, one of the fastest-growing economies in the region. Ameriabank has a well-regarded and experienced management team, and I am delighted that they will stay on after the transaction is closed.

"The board believes this transaction will enable the group to substantially increase scale and unlock additional growth opportunities as our impressive results in digitalisation, payments and customer franchise growth can be applied to Ameriabank's further development. This transaction is immediately earnings enhancing, using the group's existing cash resources, with no dilution for existing shareholders. The board unanimously views it as an excellent opportunity to create more value for our shareholders."