Today it became known that Russian-based Armenian media personality Aram Gabrielyanov was banned from entering Armenia. He has been declared a person undesirable. It can be expected that this topic will be an integral part of the public political discourse in Armenia in the next few days. Meanwhile…

But they should not be surprised by these and similar anti-democratic steps in Russia, because such things are done there by law. For example, if you speak against the state or the government, as well as the army, you can end up in prison for up to 10-15 years. Declaring citizens of other countries undesirable persons, deporting persons unacceptable to the Russian authorities, and giving the status of “foreign agent” to legal or physical persons who are not in the “authority line” is a common practice. In general, one can talk for a long time about similar phenomena in many directions of Russian state policy… Therefore, it should not be surprising that Aram Gabrielyanov’s entry to Armenia was banned, taking into account the views expressed in his public speeches regarding the current authorities of Armenia. If any state, a political figure from Armenia,

By the way, Gabrielyanov, no matter how much he has to do with this or that “Kremlin tower”, is a private person, he is neither an official, nor does he represent the state, and I don’t think that the Kremlin will be particularly “difficult” to declare Gabrielyanov an undesirable person in Armenia. In the case of Margarita Simonyan, they “didn’t stay in pain”, they certainly won’t stay in the case of Gabrielyanov…

Haykak Arshamyan, director of Hayastan All-Armenian Fund, recently decided to be honest on public air. He spoke about the need for dialogue between the fund and investors if there was no such dialogue, he said that they should meet with each other, and talk, not take a position of aggrieved. “Unfortunately, today, I have seen that there is tension in the diaspora as well. And, unfortunately, that frustration is neither from me, nor from you, but from the state of Armenia.” But it seems that the director of the fund is the one who is offended. And Arshamyan was upset with those speaking on social networks, bloggers, mass media, media manipulators who, as Arshamyan expressed, “are doing their destructive work in that direction”. Another culprit is the press, or rather, the media. “There is also distress from the war, because there was a big gap in people’s ideas and reality. I think that people should understand that RA has entered a different stage, people look at nationalism and national ideology from a slightly different point of view than, I think, they should,” he said.

It was not clear from Arshamyan’s speech what kind of crack we are talking about. Maybe he remembered about the crack in the funds of Hayastan Fund, which was created in the war year of 2020, when the RA government voluntarily, without asking the trustees, dipped its paw into the collected money and took out from there, no more, no less, 100 million dollars, 170 million dollars collected that year. million dollars. Thus: Nikol Pashinyan made what he was talking about back in 2019 a reality, so that the Hayastan Fund would become the national budget of all of us.

We asked the editor-in-chief and publisher of the “California Courier” newspaper, Harut Sasunyan, if he had watched that interview of Arshamyan, and why, in his opinion, the diaspora was “disenchanted” with the foundation. “The reason for the anger is the 105 million dollars that the Armenian government illegally took from the fund in 2020 and to this day does not say what happened to that money,” Sasunyan said. We wrote to the Union of Armenians of Russia with the same question and received the following answer. “The Union of Armenians of Russia, as an established organization, is not guided by such understandings as “resentment”, especially when it comes to the homeland. Armenians of Russia, even without participating in telethons, provide significant support to Artsakh, including on a regular basis, helping their relatives and acquaintances living there. Along with this,

Of course, there was no question about these financial means on public airwaves, which was surprising, because this is the first question that may arise in the journalist’s mind when seeing Haykak Arshamyan. One could even ask about the exact amount of money: 100 million or 105? The government and the same Haykak Arshamyan did not announce it from the beginning, saying that the money was given to the Ministry of Finance to make urgent purchases from one source.

After this, a crisis of confidence began in the foundation, the indicator of which was the criticism of the latter and the decreasing amount of funds. The 25th telethon, in November of last year, showed that the slogan “Creating vibrant communities” excites few people. Russia did not participate in the marathon at all, and the US participation, which, as a rule, was the largest, including the post-war year, this time was close to zero. However, Haykak Arshamyan was silent as if nothing had happened. He did not even demand a report from the government on how he spent the 100 million dollars of the fund.

The Chamber of Accounts conducted an investigation about 100 million dollars, but the results have not been published. Our source at the foundation informs that they were not given to the foundation on the grounds that there are “confidential things” in the conclusions of the audit. “Haikak Arshamyan, instead of going and demanding that they report to him what they did with those 100 million dollars, is talking about the resentment of the diaspora. Of course, it is a reason to get upset, 100 million is not a small amount. This is also the reason why US fundraisers are catastrophically low, they have a problem in the US. It is true that they say that they have collected money, but they are lying,” former head of the foundation Ara Vardanyan told us. He finds it funny that now the president of the Chamber of Accounts is the person Atom Janjughazyan spent that amount in the budget during his tenure as the Minister of Finance. “The inspection is carried out by a person who was the minister of finance, and he himself controlled the movement of money. It is obvious that he will not “write” anything on himself. In addition, it is strange: for two years, they spread information on different telegram channels that there were cash withdrawals from these funds, in the true sense of the word. Up to 13-14 million dollars were withdrawn. They even attached cash receipts in Telegram channels, but the prosecutor’s office neither initiated a case, nor denied it, nor checked it. And now there is an impression that if they don’t initiate, then there is something. Although an investigative committee was established in the National Assembly, it could not do anything because they demanded the movement of a specific account from the Ministry of Finance. How did the money come from the fund and where did it go? The Ministry of Finance showed how the money came, but did not show where it went. And the issue is not the fund itself. No one says that Haykak put that money in his pocket. On the contrary, they tell him: you have given the money, follow up so that what you have done is fully revealed. This is, after all, the problem of the honor of the foundation. I don’t know what he is upset about, he should demand a report from the government, not sit here and there and talk that they have spent correctly.”
A question was raised on the air of H1 that if you were going to hand over the territories of Artsakh, why were you doing business there? We asked Ara Vardanyan to comment on this. “First, Petros is clearly lying. The authorities of Armenia at all times have never talked or negotiated about the areas where the foundation has carried out work. If you look at the programs implemented by the fund, 99 percent of them were implemented within the borders of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

The weakening of the emotional connection of Armenians around the world with the Hayastan Foundation and the low rating of this structure are not new for a long time. The Foundation’s telethons and telethons have been going unnoticed for a long time and are no longer broadcast in the “live” mode, but on video recording, and for the mass media, they have long been “second class” events.

Susan Simonyan

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A road accident took place in Armenia’s capital Yerevan today.

At around 8:50 am a car and a bus collided near an intersection. As a result, 13 people suffered injuries and were transferred to several Yerevan hospitals, shamshyan.com reported.

Proceedings have been launched at the investigation department regarding the accident.

The Patrol Service and the investigation department are finding out the identity of the drivers and the injured.

The aforesaid bus is registered in the government staff balance, and all its passengers were from the Prime Minister’s staff.

The Armenian Christian presence in Jerusalem dates back to the 4th century AD.

Attacks against Armenian Christians by extremist Jews in Jerusalem are on the rise, according to a report in The Jerusalem Post, noting that the near-daily harassment of spitting, cursing, and pushing is largely ignored by the police.

In the article, “Armenians in Jerusalem Live in the Crosshairs of Hate,” The Post notes an incident on Jan. 30, 2023, when “a bunch of young Jewish holligans” attacked a restaurant in Jerusalem’s Christian Quarter. 

“Harassments that include spitting, cursing and pushing Armenian priests in the alleys of the Old City have already become routine,” reported The Post. “Young boys with an ultra-Orthodox appearance come in groups to identify the priests and harass and humiliate them.”

“This has been an almost daily occurrence for several years, but the police have so far failed to provide even a minimal response,” said the news outlet. “The Armenian residents claim that they do not receive an adequate response; there is no follow-up to the complaints submitted to the police; there are no updates; and, most importantly, there is no sign of this harassment abating. The opposite is the sad reality.”

In another incident on Jan. 31, 2023, “two Jewish extremists” tried to block traffic on a street where the Armenian Patriarchate is located. In addition, “two Israelis also struck a car in which a group of young Armenians were traveling on their way home from work,” reported The Post.

One of the extremists yelled at Fr. Aghan Gogchian, chancellor of the Patriarchate, “You don’t have a neighborhood here. This is our country. Get out of our country!”

In another incident a “group of Israelis” tried to get on the roof of the Patriarchate to “remove the flags of the Patriarchate and the Republic of Armenia.”

The owner of the restaurant that was attacked, Miran Krikorian, said, “We no longer want to file complaints with the police every time there is an attack because it’s clear to us that they won’t do anything about it anyway.”

Amnon Ramon, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Studies, told The Post “that this is a general attack on all Christians in the city.”

“It’s not just the Armenians, although the fact that the Armenian Quarter is closest to the Jewish Quarter, where most of the offending youths come from, exposes them more,” he said.  “But really, in recent years, the attacks have been directed against Christians, against what these youth call pagan worship, and a strong desire to remove them from the Land of Israel and that, of course, is exactly what is worrying the Christian communities. … This should be the most secure section in the area, so how does this happen under the nose of the police?”

A rabbi, who asked not to be identified by name, told The Post that he knows why these Jewish extremists are attacking the Christians.

“I know from where and on what soil grows the ideology that activates these young people,” he said.  “They are subject to the increasing influence of national haredi rabbis, who are becoming more and more extreme and mainly point the finger of blame at the Christians.”

“For them, the greatest threat to the Jews in the Land of Israel are the Christians, whom they see as merely idolaters who must be removed from the holy Land of Israel,” said the rabbi.  “They are young, usually lacking any knowledge in the field, and subject to the influence and manipulation of those rabbis, while the eyes of the state and its institutions are focused away from this dangerous arena.”

According to the Britannica encyclopedia, Haredi Judaism is also known as ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Its practitioners “strictly observe Jewish religious law and separate themselves from Gentile society as well as from Jews who do not follow the religious law as strictly as they do. Ultra-Orthodox communities are found primarily in Israel, where they form about 13 percent of Israel’s population.”

Amnon Ramon said that the young extremists feel emboldened in their attacks because Likud party member Itamar Ben-Gvir is the Minister of National Security, which runs the police. Ben-Gvir has a history of anti-Christian activity, said Ramon, and the radicals “feel that they can afford to go wild and no one will stop them.”

In early January, two young Jewish men were charged with vandalizing a Christian cemetery on Mount Zion. 

One of our compatriots living in Germany reacted to Nikol Pashinyan’s visit to Germany and sent us a letter in which he notes that the German and Western media in general did not cover the RA Prime Minister’s visit at all.

“If you want to know what importance was given to any case or event, you need to read the local press and search in the local media. And now let’s see what the German press and media wrote about Pashinyan’s visit to Berlin. nothing.
Only one website has written about it, the German government website, but who in the general public knows about this website, people don’t even know that such a website exists.
Coming to Scholtz’s statement about Artsakh’s right to self-determination, deleting this statement from the official website can have three explanations.

a- Scholz does not know the problems of Artsakh, and there are contradictions between him and Germanio MFA, for example, there are contradictions between the French Senate and the MFA, and the position of the MFA is Macron’s position. Germany supported Kosovo’s right to independence by all means, but the same principle is not valid for every place.

b- Azerbaijan probably lobbied in Germany and the EU, where it has very powerful leverage, especially after the Aliyev-Von der Leyen gas agreement. And the diplomats of Azerbaijan, as well as Turkey, are not sleeping.

c- Scholz and his pro-Turkish MFA have no reason to be more Armenian than Pashinyan. They saw during Pashinyan’s visit that he is not in favor of Artsakh’s right to self-determination, so why should they be in favor of it?”

Karo Boyajian

If a demagoguery competition was held among world leaders, the Prime Minister of Armenia (more precisely, the incumbent Prime Minister) Nikol Pashinyan would be in the top five,

even in the top three. There may be one or two more perfect demagogues in the world whom I have not heard of. Such a thought came to me when I was listening to his speech at the meeting with the representatives of the German-Armenian community. Especially the following series of judgments. “The problem here is not in me, not in my person, not in our government. the problem here is to be faithful to the decision of the people. Because if you, personally, give someone a mandate, then you don’t take that mandate back, and that person throws the mandate in the street and runs away, there can be no greater betrayal than that.”

When some literate or semi-literate people repeat someone’s judgment that “politics is prostitution”, I remember Nicol, or rather his demagoguery (the phrase “political prostitute” appeared in the European political vocabulary in the 18th and 19th centuries. Presumably it was first used in Great Britain, many state figures have been awarded this description). Nikol is hiding behind the people’s back, or rather, behind their political illiteracy, naivety, psychological problems caused by the shameful defeat of the 44-day war, and especially the fear of the resumption of the war. This is the typical manifestation of “political prostitution”.

If Nikol was not a demagogue, but, let’s say, a really responsible statesman, as he says about himself, then in 2020 he would on November 10, he would not have threatened the citizens who were worried about the loss of Artsakh and came to the streets, calling for revenge on his supporters, but he would have voluntarily resigned after signing the statement, so that his replacement would not be constrained by the fact that he had signed that disgrace. That is one thing, and secondly, if he had also given some verbal promises to Ilham, then those too would have been canceled by his successor. As for who could be the next, it should be discussed first of all with the representatives of the opposition. Because, as I think, there was no one around him who could carry that heavy burden.

As for what Nikol said about sticking to the decision of the people, if the latter was at least somewhat aware of the key episodes in the history of this or that country, he would know that regardless of whether there is a state or not, they are not sticking to the decision of the people, which has led to such a situation. , but they go against that very decision. By the way, he would find such an example in one of the episodes of the heroic battles of May 1918, related to the name of the artillery captain, Mosesov (Gurgen Ter-Movsisyan) from Artsakh. If it were not for that captain, the battle in Gharakilisa (today’s Vanadzor) would not have taken place, and the victorious battle of Sardarapat would not have happened either. And there would be no Republic of Armenia either. And let’s recall, at the beginning of August 2020, he was boasting under the Sardarapatikamars in connection with the July positional battle of Tavush. What the captain from Artsakh did was that instead of obeying the decision of the people (in that case, the officers), he declared that he did not obey the decision of the majority and went to fight against the Turk. And with that step, he forced the rest to follow him. As a result, the Turkish contingent from Gharakilisa could not reach Yerevan on time, and that is why the other Turkish contingent was defeated in Sardarapat.

What remains is to throw away the mandate given by the people in the street and run away, then that is not the biggest betrayal, as he thinks, but exactly what he did. Because the one who was defeated and signed the capitulation paper could no longer represent the people who elected him on the basis of completely opposite program provisions. First, and secondly, it was necessary not to throw the mandate in the street, but, as it was said above, to give it to competent and concerned people about the fate of the motherland, until then presenting the whole truth regarding both the war and its termination.

And what did he do? he just hid in the bunker and preserved his power at the cost of “sacrificing” Mirzoyan Aro. The director of the National Security Service at that time should have learned much later from the words of Russian President Putin that during the war Nikol was offered a truce with much more tolerable conditions, which he refused. Oh, that was the betrayal, not the resignation of the mandate.

I am sorry that those who believe in Pashinyan and even swear by his name will not come to these thoughts on their own. And the biggest demagogue in the history of our nation will continue to manipulate people. And he will succeed, unfortunately. As for the next victims of us, Artsakh or Armenia, we will always have a reason to mourn as long as Nikol is the prime minister. So the reason for this situation is not because someone like Ilham is the leader or being an enemy of Azerbaijan, but because of our poverty and begging for peace. In other words, the reason is in us. By the way, the South Caucasian representative of Euro-bureaucracy, Toivo Klaari, who visited Baku yesterday, said that “today’s fatal incident (we are talking about three of our police officers who fell victim to another Azerbaijani sabotage attack, V.S. ) emphasizes the importance of progress in negotiations to achieve stability and a just peace. Interestingly, the same is not said in terms of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. And European bureaucrats like him protect one specific side both in words and in practice. And in that case, the reason is not only their hatred of Russia but also the fact that the president of Ukraine, like Nikol, does not surrender to the mercy of the enemy.

Vakhtang Siradeghyan

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