Representatives of Azerbaijan and the defacto authorities representing local ethnic Armenians today met under the auspices of the Russian peacekeeping force at its headquarters in Khojali. Such meetings are not new but there are a few major differences.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) has published a report on the potential role of the new European Union Mission in Armenia (EUMA) once it is deployed to patrol the country’s sometimes volatile border with Azerbaijan later this month. The mission, a dedicated deployment, is more on par with the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) in neighbouring Georgia than the temporary and much shorter-term European Union Monitoring Capacity (EUMCAP) that ended on 19 December last year.
The 25 December rally in Stepanakert, the defacto capital of what remains of the Soviet-era Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO), was large. An estimated 30-35,000 ethnic Armenian residents of the breakaway region gathered in the city’s Renaissance Square in an act of defiance in response to Azerbaijani “eco—activists” picketing the Lachin corridor.
Depending on who you ask, Armenia and Azerbaijan are either moving closer towards signing a long overdue peace deal or Yerevan is under duress from Baku to capitulate further following its defeat in 2020. Both can be true, of course, but the reality is that there is only a limited window of opportunity available to reach such a negotiated settlement. Following the recent fighting on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, it seems the international community understands that only too well.
On 25th July, the Yerevan-based online news site Civilnet uploaded an interview with Armenian Political Scientist and LeHigh University Professor Arman Grigoryan. Below is a summary of what Grigoryan said and a rough translation. The full interview in Russian is embedded at the bottom of this post.
After months amassing troops on the border with Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the order to further into Ukrainian territory late last month. For the first time in two decades, full-scale war returned to the European continent, sending out shockwaves globally. Outrage was widespread and in a rare show of unity, even if unwilling or unable to intervene directly, the vast majority of UN member states condemned the Russian military action.
Georgian protesters in Tbilisi have entered their fourth week of demonstrations in response to an official visit by Russian legislator Sergei Gavrilov to Georgia on June 20. While attending an inter-parliamentary meeting on Orthodoxy, Gavrilov angered many Georgians by addressing the Georgian Parliament in Russian from the parliamentary speaker’s chair.
A bit late, but some photographs from last month’s protest demonstration organised by Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement in Tbilisi, Georgia. As usual, Democracy & Freedom Watch filed a report.
A few hours after the first reports of fatalities during violent clashes in Ukraine surfaced, some Georgians took to Facebook to organise a small solidarity rally in support of Euromaidan protestors outside the site of the former parliament building in Tbilisi. The demonstration follows similar events held last year.