The blocking of the Lachin corridor can be seen in the context of the new status quo, which was established in November 2020 as a result of the second Karabakh war, as well as in the context of last year’s events, Sergey Markedonov, a leading researcher at the Center for Euro-Atlantic Security at the Moscow State Institute for International Studies, told NEWS.am on the program the Power Factor.

Sergey Markedonov noted that Russian diplomats appeal to the trilateral statement dated November 9, 2020, but last year, Baku subjected to the revision of these agreements, gently and step by step, moving back the red lines.

This tactic was used in March, in the village of Parukh, in Lachin, when Azerbaijan said it had to provide its road and control it, although this project was supposed to be implemented in 2023, not 2022. Then events on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border followed, he noted.

Today Azerbaijan is not ready for compromise, but before 2020, Armenia was not very ready for it either.

Armenia was in a strong position, now everything is reversed. Azerbaijan wants to take everything. That desire is obvious, Markedonov  said.

If we look at the statements of young Azerbaijanis, who went abroad, they believe that the war was not won to the end, Aliyev rewound the tape to the mark of 1991, Moscow controls him, as it used to control the party leadership of Azerbaijan at the end of reconstruction, and he is forced to react in this situation, Markedonov emphasized.

According to Markedonov, Aliyev believes that there are certain public sentiments, dissatisfaction, there is a feeling of an incomplete victory, and he wants to finish the game.

In this situation, it is not very possible to talk about any kind of dialogue. Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly said that Armenia has lost, and losers cannot dictate conditions, he talked about five points. The Lachin crisis fits into this logic, the expert added.

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev has complained about India’s weapon sales to Armenia being an “unfriendly move” as they have “only one target, Azerbaijan.”

“If we are facing a serious threat, we will deal with that threat immediately, regardless of where that threat arises, within our territory or outside our borders. It is our legitimate right to do so,” added the dictator in an interview with local media on January 10.

A few hours later, Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to India Ashraf Shikhaliyev sought to dial down the harsh observations by congratulating India on the G20 Presidency and pointing out that Azerbaijan Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov was participating in the Global South Summit’s session on energy security.

In an attempt to take the heat off bilateral ties, the Ambassador pointed out that India’s G20 theme of “One Earth, One Family, One Future” showed the role of the developing world in shaping global agenda.

Ilham, who along with father Haider Aliyev, has ruled oil-rich Azerbaijan for 30 years, said: “We see and know which countries are preparing to give weapons to Armenia. Unfortunately, India is now among them.”

“We consider this an unfriendly move. Because these weapons have only one target, Azerbaijan,” he added.

India has made little attempt to hide the sale of military-grade radars to Armenia when the first war with Azerbaijan took place in 2020.

The media had reported that a defense delegation from Armenia visited India to meet with their counterparts while noting that the indigenous weapon-locating radars were a success in Armenia as well.

In September, “India Narrative” reported that India was prepared to export missiles, rockets and ammunition to Armenia and that the two nations had signed contracts for the supply of arms and ammunition.

The main arms suppliers to Azerbaijan in its upper hand over Armenia have been Turkey and Pakistan.

Turkey, Pakistan and Azerbaijan comprise of the “Three Brothers” nexus and have announced to support their collective territorial ambitions on Cyprus, Armenia and India, in the latter’s case, specifically on Jammu and Kashmir.

Avetis Babajanyan

A few days ago, Ararat Mirzoyan had a telephone conversation with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and emphasized the importance of sending a UN fact-finding mission to the Lachin Corridor. Mirzoyan’s superior, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan,

is constantly talking about sending a fact-finding mission of the ILO, OSCE or other international structures to the Lachin Corridor. Why do they attach so much importance to the mission of the fact-finding mission, or what should be the result of that mission? The Lachin Corridor should be opened, and the people of Artsakh should travel through it unhindered, or should they invite a fact-finding mission to record that there is no illegal norm in the actions of the Azerbaijanis that violate international law, on the contrary, the demands of the people of Artsakh are disproportionately large and contrary to international law?

Nikol Pashinyan, signing the Prague protocol on October 7, recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. If Pashinyan’s government recognizes Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over Artsakh, it means that it recognizes Azerbaijan’s right to force the people of Artsakh to live within the framework of Azerbaijan’s Constitution and laws. The UN and, as Pashinyan says, all countries recognize Artsakh as a part of Azerbaijan, therefore they consider Azerbaijan’s actions both in the Lachin Corridor and in other territories of Artsakh as an internal issue of that country.

Azerbaijan does not declare that it aims to force the people of Artsakh either to accept Azerbaijani citizenship or to leave the territory of Artsakh, which Pashinyan recognized as part of Azerbaijan, by threatening them with starvation. Azerbaijan says: I have the right to control the exploitation of mines in my territory, to control the movement of people and goods in the territory of my country. Can any country or international organization dispute or oppose these demands of Azerbaijan?

Any UN or OSCE fact-finding mission, visiting the Lachin Corridor, what should it record, what violation of international law should it see to force Azerbaijan to open it? Citizens of Azerbaijan stand along the corridor and demand that the mines located in the territory of Azerbaijan be operated taking into account the environmental norms of their country. The authorities of Azerbaijan insist that the export of ore or concentrate from their country should be done only with their permission and control.

It turns out that Nikol Pashinyan and Ararat Mirzoyan are inviting a fact-finding mission to the Lachin Corridor in order for them to record that all the demands of Azerbaijan are legal, that Azerbaijan is acting not only within its domestic but also international legislation. As soon as the international structures and the so-called observation-fact-gathering missions record something like this, Pashinyan and Mirzoyan can calmly say that it is not Azerbaijan that makes illegal demands to the people of Artsakh, but the people of Artsakh make unrealizable demands outside of international law, which the Armenian authorities are capable of not supported.

How strong is Mirzoyan to go against international law, especially since according to the Constitution of Armenia, international law takes precedence over domestic legislation?
Simply put, Mirzoyan asks Guterres to send an observation mission to the Lachin Corridor, which will explain to the people of Artsakh that not only Azerbaijan is against them, but also the entire international community, international legislation. Now what can poor Armenia and its pathetic authorities do, they can’t go against the entire international community and the international law created for decades, can they? So, let the people of Artsakh quietly submit to Azerbaijan’s demands and, as Pashinyan says, start a dialogue with Azerbaijan to discuss the terms of capitulation. He himself has a successful experience of this, let the people of Artsakh follow the path he opened.

It’s just that the people of Artsakh and the authorities of Artsakh put Pashinyan and his subordinate Mirzoyan in a very bad situation and refuse to recognize the international law that imposes their Azeri slavery and destruction. In fact, international law protects nations that fight for their right to live freely. Before Pashinyan came to power, international law recognized the right of Artsakh citizens to live freely and manage their own destiny independently, as evidenced by the negotiations conducted within the framework of the OSCE Minsk. It is not the international law that forces the people of Artsakh to accept Azerbaijani citizenship and live under Azerbaijan, but the Pashinyan-Aliyev couple. They just want to do everything to show that their policy of enslaving the people of Artsakh is carried out within the framework of international law, and there is no alternative to it. And that there is an alternative, and what that alternative is, is known to everyone since September 2020 and something before that.

Avetis Babajanyan

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For years, the American billionaire George Soros has paid large sums of money to representatives of prestigious and leading American media to cover and present the international transition and geopolitical developments in his convenient way.

Fox News informs about it with reference to the research of MRC Business organization. According to the information, Soros’ money was directed to, among others, CNN, NBC, CBS, Bloomberg, NPR, The Washington Post. It is said that George Soros spent a total of 131 million dollars on directing the news of 253 media outlets. Fox News also writes that the payment of money to the media was made through groups financed by Soros. It should be noted that the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, commenting on the publication, noted that the information, if proven, will become a “nuclear explosion” for the “Democracy” of the USA.

Source: https://www.foxbangor.com/national-news/left-wing-billionaire-george-soros-funneled-at-least-131-million-to-media-groups-from-2016-2020-study-finds/

The shortage of some types of medications, for example, a number of antibiotics, including children’s syrups, is indeed observed in the medication market in Armenia, Director General of Eskulap Pharmaceutical Company Gagik Grigoryan told NEWS.am Medicine.

According to him, the reason is that large international drug producing companies leave the Armenian market, as they are not interested in it for its small size.

As a result, there is a problem with the availability of medicines in Armenia. According to Gagik Grigoryan about 3,500-4,000 types of drugs are registered in Armenia at the moment, which you can easily check at pharm.am. And among them are many different analogues, that is, the same drug from different manufacturers.

Whereas in neighboring Georgia about 7,000 drugs are registered, and in Russia – 15,000. He recalled that during the emergency situation, during the covid pandemic and the 44-day war in Artsakh, the Armenian government allowed local import companies to import medicines that were not registered in Armenia, but were necessary for the country’s needs.

This permission was given until the end of 2022 and the companies have provided a sufficient supply of medicines, but sometime in the summer of 2022 they warned the Ministry of Health that in the current situation the deficit of some medicines is inevitable.

Minister of Healthcare Anahit Avanesyan had a meeting on this issue with the participation of representatives of pharmaceutical companies, during which the issue of registering medicines necessary for Armenia was also discussed. It was decided to prolong the possibility of registering drugs through national procedure until the end of 2023. The fact is that according to the agreement of EAEU, from 2023 medicines in Armenia should be registered under the EAEU procedure.

However, extending the registration period has not yet yielded the desired results: manufacturing companies continue to curtail their activities in Armenia and transfer their offices to Kazakhstan and Georgia.

At the same time, according to Gagik Grigoryan, there are about 1600 registered drugs in the EEU drug register today, 80% of which are registered in Russia, and they have to be recognized by other member countries. But only 12-15 of them are currently registered in Armenia, when the whole process must be completed by 2026.

The head of the pharmaceutical company believes that Armenia should automatically recognize the EEU registration. He added that after a meeting at the Ministry of Health, the Ministry decided to allow the import of unregistered drugs from six groups by February 28, 2023, which are designed to treat those patients whose care is taken by the state. They are psychotropic, antitumor, antiepileptic, anti-Parkinson’s drugs and antidotes. But patients in Armenia also need other very important medications, which at the moment are not available in the country. In order to solve this problem, Gagik Grigoryan offers to automatically recognize the registration of medicines in developed countries or, say, in the European Union, where there are strict national and supranational regulations, and you can not doubt the quality and safety of drugs registered in these countries.

He recalled that before the adoption of the new “Law on Medicines”, when medicines were imported to Armenia, they had to undergo not only documentary but also laboratory examination. Under the new law, laboratory expertise is no longer conducted, and the responsibility for the quality and safety of imported medicines automatically falls on the importers. “How can I bring unregistered low-quality drugs, of unknown origin, when there is a criminal penalty for this?” said the head of the company, adding that when in the past three years it was allowed to import unregistered drugs, not a single case of importing low-quality or counterfeit drugs was detected.

The head of the pharmaceutical company suggests the government analyze the situation on the market, assess what unregistered but vital medicines Armenia needs and temporarily allow their import again, until a final decision on their registration in Armenia is found.

Under the current circumstances, according to him, increasing penalties for selling unregistered drugs will only worsen the situation with the availability of medicines. Gagik Grigoryan suggested enquiring how much tax was paid by importers of medicines while the Ministry of Health was allowed to import unregistered drugs, and how much is paid after their import was banned.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk calls for immediate and complete free and safe movement through the Lachin corridor.

According to him, unrestricted access to food, medicine and other basic goods and services is essential for the human rights of the affected population.

By David Boyajian

1. Armenia is more critical to Russia’s security than Ukraine is.

Armenia is Russia’s sole ally in the Caucasus, a region I’ve often termed Ground Zero for Cold War 2.0.

Without its Armenian partner, Russia would lose the Caucasus and Caspian Sea – and possibly Turkic Central Asia – to pan-Turkism and NATO. Pan-Turkic ideology parallels NATO’s own anti-Russian ideology and ambitions.

In contrast, even if Ukraine joined NATO, the Russian-NATO power balance would not change drastically. Realistically, Europe and America aren’t about to launch a major, unprovoked attack on a nuclear/WMD-armed Russia.

The Turkey-Caucasus-Caspian-Central Asia belt, however, has long posed an existential challenge for its northern neighbor.

Though vulnerable to another Russian attack, Georgia remains a possible NATO candidate and Western darling. It hosts Europe-bound gas and oil pipelines originating in Azerbaijan. Georgia is also currently the West’s only path into/out of the Caucasus/Caspian. Azerbaijan, an ally of Turkey and Israel, has fallen into line with Georgia.

Turkey and Azerbaijan (“two countries, one nation”) closed their borders with Armenia three decades ago. That has left Christian (Apostolic, Catholic and Evangelical) Armenia as the only physical obstacle to full U.S./NATO/Turkish penetration of Russia’s underbelly. That explains much of why Moscow values Yerevan.

Given its genocidal experiences with Turkey and Azerbaijan, Armenia has necessarily allied itself with Russia. While Armenia prizes its independence, it must rely on Russia for its gas and oil, the operation of its nuclear power plant, weaponry and more.

On the other hand, the West has rarely assisted Armenia militarily despite their millennia-long and contemporary friendly relations. Unfortunately, the so-called Christian West and some thinly disguised dark forces prefer Turkic mass murderers.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, elected/reelected in 2018/2021, has been friendlier with the West than have previous Armenian leaders.

That has angered Putin. He now wants to totally dominate Russia’s ally lest America/NATO/Turkey knock over the region’s remaining domino: Armenia.

2. Russia is blockading the ancient Armenian-populated province of Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabagh

Around Dec. 12, 2022, Azerbaijan initiated what has turned into a food, fuel, electricity, medical and communications blockade of the 120,000 Christian Armenians of Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabagh].

Azerbaijan did so mainly by placing phony “demonstrators” on Artsakh’s only road to/from Armenia.

In the 1920s, Stalin maliciously assigned the ancient, Armenian-populated province of Artsakh to Azerbaijan as part of his divide and conquer strategy.

From 1991 to 2020, Armenia’s military successfully protected Artsakh against constant Azerbaijani attacks. That changed in late 2020. Armenians lost much of Artsakh due to deliberate Russian passivity and Turkey and Israel’s siding with Azerbaijan.

Baku now seeks not only to ethnically cleanse Artsakh but also, with Ankara’s backing, to seize huge swathes of Armenia itself.

However, it’s actually the 2,000 armed Russian “peacekeepers” in Artsakh who are now the de facto blockaders of that province.

They could move the Azeri “demonstrators” out of the road in five minutes or allow an airlift of aid. Putin could also end the blockade with one phone call to Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev.

So why is Artsakh still under blockade?

Because Putin is holding Artsakh hostage to force Armenia – again, the obstacle to Western penetration – to totally capitulate to Russia.

Moscow probably also wants to inspire a coup against Pashinyan. And all this despite Armenia’s having reliably befriended Russia for 200 years.

And, no, Russia isn’t “too busy” or “preoccupied” with Ukraine. That nonsense comes from uninformed/disingenuous Western commentators.

Moscow and the Russian-led CSTO military alliance (Armenia is a member) have been brazenly violating their defense agreements with Yerevan. Since 2022, Russia/CSTO have openly and in-your-face let Azeri troops invade, occupy, and fortify sections of southeastern Armenia.

That, like the Russian blockade, is intended to cause Armenia grief and cede its independence to Russia. That’s Putin’s style.

In addition, 2020’s unprovoked war against Artsakh and Armenia by Azerbaijan – joined by Turkey, its American F-16s, Israel, ISIS and other terrorists – was clearly greenlighted by Moscow, which had halted previous major Azeri attacks.

This time, however, Putin intentionally waited until Artsakh and Armenia were on the ropes. He then imposed a “cease-fire” that sent Russian “peacekeepers” (in reality, extortionists) into Artsakh and additional Russian troops into Armenia itself.

Throughout these ordeals, the Russian president has openly and gratuitously taunted Armenia.

“Where,” to paraphrase Putin, “are your Western friends now? Nowhere. I will let Azerbaijan rain death and destruction down upon Armenia, even though it’s an ally, as a lesson it will not soon forget.”

It’s reminiscent of the taunt Turks threw at Armenians during the Genocide of 1915-1923: “Let’s see your Jesus Christ come and save you now.” Azerbaijan has again emulated Turkey by butchering Armenian women, summarily executing captured Armenian soldiers, and torturing Armenian prisoners of war.
Members of Congress, France, other countries and human rights organizations have condemned the blockade of Artsakh. But they have done little to help materially.

Armenia needs sophisticated Western weapons. Is it less deserving than Ukraine?

The bottom line: Moscow is forcing Armenia to fully assimilate into Russia. The latter would then have a permanent foothold in the Caucasus to checkmate the West.

The “cease-fire” of December 2020 says that Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey must open their “transport connections.”

Would that allow Western penetration of Armenia and thus the entire Caucasus?

Probably not. Russia might have total control over Armenia by then. The West’s ability to use Armenia as a pathway may be limited.

Western commerce with the Caucasus/Caspian may also grind to a halt with a Russian invasion of Georgia that would sever the Europe-bound gas and oil pipelines.

Will the West come to regret its support of the Turkic mass murderers? Will Russia someday regret its betrayal of Armenia?

We shall see.

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David Boyajian’s primary foreign policy focus is the Caucasus. His work can be found at Armeniapedia.

Source: https://www.wndnewscenter.org/crisis-in-the-caucasus-2-facts-you-arent-being-told/