MP Anna Kostanyan from the opposition Bright Armenia Party said Armenia should not act “spinelessly” and “bend its neck” before the whole world following the defeat in the recent war with Azerbaijan.

“Why should we necessarily act spinelessly and bend our neck before the whole world during the war and after it, especially in the 21st century,” the lawmaker said during the parliamentary debates on the execution of the government’s 2020 action plan.

Kostanyan urged the current authorities not to try shifting responsibility for the outcome of the war to the former authorities, stating they are the “number one responsible” for the war and its tragic outcome.

The MP said that the government diplomacy under the slogan “We negotiate what we want or what we need” was followed by a war, steps to numb the public consciousness and information blockade, and finally a defeat.

“If you cannot respond adequately with diplomatic language, I think that you should step aside and allow those capable of speaking to speak,” Anna Kostanyan said, referring to the fact that the authorities failed to respond to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s statements.

Referring to the education sector of the action plan, the deputy said that the government named it as a priority, but all the programs that were set to be implemented under the government’s 2020 program were not realized.

According to the Bright Armenia MP, the link between education and science with the labor market has not been strengthened.

She stated the law “On Higher Education and Science” also dealt a blow to the university autonomy and did not create conditions for young scientists to work and earn their living.

The Legislative Assembly of Alberta recently passed a Law, unanimously recognizing the Armenian Genocide and other genocides, while the government declared the month of April as Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month.

Bill 205, sponsored by MLA Peter Singh of the United Conservative Party of Alberta, was passed after its third reading on March 22, 2021 and received Royal Assent on March 26, 2021.

The bill, titled “Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month Act” encourages the government to develop strategies to prevent and combat the causes of genocide, recognize the impact of genocides on individuals from various ethnic and religious communities in Alberta, remember the victims and raise awareness on genocides that have occurred across the world.

The bill specifically highlights the Armenian Genocide; the Ukrainian Holodomor; the Jewish Holocaust; the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda; the Srebrenica Massacre; the Yazidi Genocide and the Rohingya Genocide.

Furthermore, the bill prescribes that “Within one year of the coming into force of this Act, the Minister must complete a report setting out the strategies and proposed actions that the Government commits to undertake to effect the purposes of this Act.”

With the passage of Bill 205, Alberta becomes the second province in Canada – after Quebec – to pass a bill into law, recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

The Canadian Senate recognized the Armenian Genocide in 2002, followed by the House of Commons in 2004 and the Government of Canada in 2006. On April 24, 2015, on the centenary of the Armenian Genocide, the House of Commons unanimously passed Motion-587, declaring the month of April as Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month in Canada.

The Armenian National Committee of Canada is extremely pleased with the passage of Bill 205 and expresses its utmost gratitude to the Premier of Alberta, the Hon. Jason Kenney, MLA Peter Singh and all members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for their principled stance and their unwavering commitment to truth and justice.

After previously denying it, Azerbaijan now says that Armenia fired Russian-made rockets during last year’s war. And now they’re trying to make things difficult for Moscow.

Azerbaijan has launched a public campaign against Russia, with the government and other public figures lining up to air choreographed grievances.

The pretext is clear: the alleged use of state-of-the-art Russian missiles against Azerbaijani targets in the waning days of last year’s war. But what’s less clear is what exactly Baku is trying to get out of Moscow as a result.

The campaign launched on April 2, when Azerbaijan’s state mine-removal agency ANAMA announced that it had found remains of two exploded Iskander missiles as it was clearing ordnance in Shusha, in Nagorno-Karabakh. This revived a long-running controversy over whether or not Armenia had used the missiles during the war, an issue that had previously led to serious political crisis in Armenia but which Azerbaijan had been content to stay out of.

When Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan notoriously claimed in February that Armenia had used the Iskander missiles, but that “90 percent of them didn’t explode,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that his side had no evidence that the missiles had been fired at them, and mocked Pashinyan for making “another public blooper.”

Now, though, the tone from Baku has changed. And ANAMA’s announcement included an extra-spicy accusation: that the missiles used against Shusha were not the Iskander E variant, designed for export and which Armenia was known to have had, but the M variant, which is known to be operated only by Russia. And the report has been followed by a seemingly coordinated PR campaign against Russia of the type that is often seen when Baku wants to make things difficult for Moscow.

As usually happens in these kinds of cases, senior Azerbaijani officials, including Aliyev, have been relatively muted, taking a “just asking questions” tone. On April 12, at the official inauguration of a new “Military Trophies Park” where the Iskanders were on display (among far more notorious exhibits), he said: “Armenians fired at Shusha with these Iskander-M missiles. Where did the Armenian military get these missiles from? They shouldn’t have had them.”

The next day, Aliyev reported that in a phone conversation with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin two weeks earlier, “we discussed this question. On my orders, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry sent an official letter with photographs, evidence. But so far we haven’t received any answer.”

The dirtier work, meanwhile, is being done by semi-official sources.

“The Iskandar M, the remnants of one of which were discovered in Shusha, is in the sole possession of the Russian Federation,” wrote Esmira Jafarova, an analyst at the state-run think tank Center of Analysis of International Relations. “The story behind this discovery definitely has a dark side that needs to be clarified, as the absence of plausible answers may generate dangerous speculation.”

Another analyst, Elchin Mirzabayli, suggested the M variant had been supplied illegally to Armenia. “These missile systems were illegally delivered to Armenia by criminal groups engaged in the arms trade,” Mirzabayli told the local news site Azernews. “Either Russia is holding back the truth about the sale of Iskander-M missiles to Armenia, or its leadership has not been informed about it. Anyway, the fact must be seriously investigated.”

Russian officials have repeatedly denied it. Putin spokesman Dmitriy Peskov said immediately after ANAMA’s announcement that Moscow confirmed that Iskanders (of any variety) hadn’t been used in the war and that they had no information about where Azerbaijan’s evidence was coming from. But he continues to be asked about it, and on April 11 he said that: “Military officials are engaged in a close dialogue. All corresponding questions are being discussed.”

Armenian military officials have refused to comment.

There have been reports in the past that Armenia did in fact get the M variant from Russia. A 2018 story in the Russian newspaper Kommersant cited an unnamed source in Russia’s defense industry saying that Armenia got a division’s worth of the Iskander M systems in 2016. Somewhat vaguely, it explained that this violated export protocols (the domestic version has a longer range than the export version), but that “Moscow was forced to take the step” because Armenia had no other option to defend itself in case of an Azerbaijani attack on Nagorno-Karabakh. 

The publicly available evidence, though, doesn’t prove whether the E or the M version was used. The images published by Azerbaijan could be from the rocket used in either system, Dmitriy Kornev, an analyst of Russian military hardware, told Eurasianet.

At this point, though, whether the Iskander was used and if so, what kind, has become a secondary issue. Its role as a political instrument by Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and possibly Russians, is far more significant. The question, as yet unanswered, is what Baku is now trying to get out of Moscow.

This kind of information campaign by Azerbaijan isn’t new, especially against Russia. But it is especially sensitive given Russia’s newly empowered role in the region.

It doesn’t appear that there is any one specific issue, but rather an overall dissatisfaction with Russia’s new role as virtually the sole mediator between the two sides, including the crucial peacekeeping mission.

The Russia-Azerbaijan dyad is probably the single most important relationship for determining the future contours of the conflict. It was Russia’s intervention following Azerbaijan’s victory in Shusha that prevented Azerbaijan from quickly completing its conquest of all of Nagorno-Karabakh, and it is the Russian peacekeeping mission that remains the only thing protecting the Armenian civilians remaining in Karabakh today. It’s not clear how Russia convinced Azerbaijan to stop its offensive, and it’s not clear how Moscow intends to convince Baku to extend the mandate of the peacekeeping mission when it expires in late 2025.

Analyst Shahin Jafarli told BBC Azeri that the government’s grievances against Russia were general, that its peacekeeping mission has been excessively favoring the Armenian side. He added that it appeared the Russians were building barracks and other infrastructure that suggested they were preparing for a larger mission. And he argued that the Iskander claims were “a sign of growing tensions between the two sides.”

Azerbaijan may also be leaning on Russia so that Russia in turn leans on Armenia to take some of the steps that Azerbaijan has been demanding, like withdraw Armenian military forces from the region and provide maps of the land mines the Armenian side laid during the war.

All of these negotiations are opaque, however, and Russia isn’t tipping its hand. A couple of other developments this week only added to the number of moving parts.

The first was Pashinyan’s announcement that Armenia was “conducting effective discussions with our Russian colleagues” about setting up a second Russian military base in the country, in the southern Syunik region. There hasn’t been any mention of this from the Russian side. But if it came to pass, it obviously would only deepen Russia’s role as Armenia’s security guarantor.

The second was a report in the Russian newspaper RBK about discussions around Azerbaijan participating in an upcoming meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Russia-led trade bloc. It has been a long-standing Russian goal to get Azerbaijan to join the EAEU (along with every other post-Soviet state that isn’t already a member), and Azerbaijan has never been particularly interested. Further, the Armenian sources for the story say that Armenia (a current EAEU member) is blocking Azerbaijan’s participation until the latter releases the Armenian captives it has been holding since the end of the war.

Why would Baku take this step that it’s been unwilling to take thus far in order to participate in a meeting of a group it doesn’t want to join? RBK acknowledges that is unlikely to happen ahead of the meeting (scheduled for the end of April in Kazan). But if there are real discussions about Azerbaijan at least participating in the EAEU, it could potentially be a way to score points with Moscow while allowing Azerbaijan access to another platform it can use to pressure Armenia. It doesn’t hurt that most EAEU member states probably have better relations with Baku than with Yerevan, a fact underscored by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s visit this week to Azerbaijan, where he got a warm welcome including an invitation to participate in the reconstruction of Azerbaijan’s newly retaken territories.

“I said again that we will invite only companies from friendly countries to participate in the reconstruction of the territories. And Belarus is a friendly country for Azerbaijan,” Aliyev told Lukashenko at a joint press appearance on April 14.

Lukashenko, for his part, offered a very Lukashenkian call for reconciliation.

“Thank god this is all over. It’s great that you ended it, and I’m sure that you will turn this page like this, that Azerbaijan is not planning to humiliate the Armenians who live in Azerbaijan, after all they don’t live in Karabakh but in other places also,” he said, using a Belarusian criminal slang phrase that refers to prison rape. “And I haven’t seen any evidence that any Azerbaijanis are humiliating Armenians. We will offer any kind of help wherever you ask. We will offer our own variants.”

Azerbaijan’s post-war behavior, though, suggests that humiliation is precisely what it is trying to achieve, a revenge for 26 years of its own humiliation. It’s been pushing its advantage against on-its-heels Armenia, but it’s a risker gambit to try against Russia.

Joshua Kucera is the Turkey/Caucasus editor at Eurasianet, and author of The Bug Pit.

Prominent public figure, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, co-founder of the Aurora Prize and Initiative Vardan Gregoryan has passed away.

Vardan Gregoryan was born in 1934 in Tabriz and emigrated to the USA at a young age, overcoming many difficulties and building a brilliant career. 1981-1989 ․ He was president of the New York Public Library and in 1997 headed Brown University.

In 2015, Vardan Gregorian, together with Ruben Vardanyan and Nubar Afeyan, founded the “Aurora” humanitarian initiative.

I am ready to meet Alen Simonyan in court, I have expressed my inner conviction that Alen Simonyan is the one who ordered the ongoing social network campaign against me at the moment. Tert.am journalist Ani Gorgyan told Aravot.am about this, referring to NA Vice Speaker Alen Simonyan’s Facebook post that he had talked to his lawyers about the defamatory statement, who advised him to defend his rights in court and hold him accountable for defamation.

Persons disseminating false information. “I have such a conviction and confidence formed from the fact that the attack, the disgusting attack, started after the briefing with Alen Simonyan in the parliament two days ago. I should mention that the conviction was formed during the briefing from Alen Simonyan’s behavior’s targeted attitude towards me, I should mention that his aggressive behavior was even frightening. Besides, let me remind you that there are many publications in the press that such fake attacks are led by Alen Simonyan. “How many deputies spoke about it from the tribune of the parliament,” said Ani Gorgyan. According to the journalist, while presenting a report to the police yesterday, he informed about his reasonable suspicions about Alen Simonyan. “It concerns my young child, in any case I will exercise my rights, any reasonable suspicion must be examined. “Mr. Simonyan, we will meet in court,” he said.

Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi said he would not correct anything regarding his recent comments on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, when urged to do so by former Italian ambassador to Ankara Luigi Mattiolo, BBC Turkish reported on Thursday, citing Italian sources.

Mattiolo told Draghi that him calling Erdoğan a “dictator” could have “serious consequences”, Italian daily La Stampa reported.

“This must be somehow corrected,” Mattiolo told Draghi, according to La Stampa, to which the premier responded, “I will not correct anything.”

Responding to a question on SofaGate, a crisis emerging from the treatment of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during a press event with Erdoğan and European Council President Charles Michel, Draghi said Erdoğan was among “dictators with whom we need to cooperate” on April 8.

Breaking his silence for the first time on the matter, Erdoğan on Thursday said, “This man called Draghi took an axe to relations between us by making this statement.”

Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s right-wing La Lega, said in a tweet, “Today more than ever I stand with president Draghi, democracy, freedom and the West.”

“That Mr Erdoğan, who arrests opposition deputies and bombs Kurdish villages, wants to give lessons to the Italian prime minister in style and manners is hilarious,” Italian wire service 

ANSA cited Secretary National of Italy’s left-wing Sinistra Italiana Nicola Frattoianni as saying.

Washington, D.C. – During the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) confirmation hearing on Thursday, April 15, 2021, of Ambassador Victoria Nuland to serve as U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, SFRC Chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) raised key issues relating to the Armenian people, including the Armenian prisoners of war still unjustly held captive by Azerbaijan and the need for robust humanitarian assistance, reported the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly).

Referring to the 44-day war launched by Azerbaijan, with the full and open support of Turkey, against the Armenian people in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) on September 27, 2020 as an “unspeakable tragedy” and the “inexcusable” absence of top-level United States diplomacy throughout the war, Chairman Menendez stated that the “U.S. must press Azerbaijan to release the prisoners of war members that it has – which [Azerbaijan] is refusing to release them – in violation of international law.”
Amb. Nuland confirmed that the U.S. has to “get the prisoners released.”
“I’ve worked on Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh issues for some 25 years, and the way things went down last year was absolutely tragic for so many in the region,” Amb. Nuland continued.
During the afternoon hearing, Chairman Menendez also spoke about the significance and urgency of U.S. humanitarian assistance to Artsakh and the importance of “ensuring that the Armenians displaced from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh get the assistance they need.” 
Amb. Nuland replied in full agreement about committing to robust humanitarian assistance, including demining funds, and to ensuring the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of Armenia, and that it can make its own decisions.”
In reply to Chairman Menendez’s question about how to revitalize the OSCE Minsk Group, in order to create a more sustainable peace process, Amb. Nuland discussed having conversations with Turkey. 
“The Secretary [of State Antony Blinken] has spoken about needing to be clear-eyed regarding trends in Turkey,” said Amb. Nuland. “We’ve got a lot of work to do there in our bilateral relationship to make clear our concerns about not only what Turkey’s doing outside its country, but also what it’s doing inside its country.”
Amb.Nuland emphasized the importance of conveying “strong support for the Caucasus countries, being active diplomatically, getting high-level leadership there, and using all of our economic and humanitarian tools.”
“We commend Chairman Menendez’s ongoing leadership,” stated Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny. “The release of the POWs is paramount as are the compelling humanitarian needs of the Armenian people. We continue to press forward on all fronts,” Ardouny added. 
The Assembly strongly supports bipartisan legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives calling on Azerbaijan to immediately release and repatriate Armenian POWs and captured civilians.

Çavuşoğlu was so taken aback by Dendias’ articulate references to international law and reality that he could only mutter out: “I didn’t impune Greece in my speech.” Turks are not use to foreigners calling things out exactly how they are, especially when speaking in Turkey.

In Erdoğan’s alternate reality, apparently Çavuşoğlu put Dendias “in his place.” Turkey is still recovering from that verbal humiliation from Dendias yesterday. Turkey is extra angry at Dendias because they could not censor what he said like they usually do in the media.

The World Press Photo Awards honor the best visual journalism worldwide. The past year was not only marked by the pandemic, but also the climate crisis and forgotten conflicts.

World Press Photo of the Year

Along with the top award, Mads Nissen also won in the General News category with his photo of an 85-year-old woman being embraced for the first time in months through a “hug curtain” by a nurse at the Viva Bem care home in Sao Paulo. It is a “rare positive photo about the COVID-19 era,” said the jury. Under President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil is one of the countries most affected by the virus.

YEREVAN. – Zhoghovurd newspaper of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes: According to Zhoghovurd daily’s information, RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s statement from the NA [National] tribune the day before about the [recent Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)] war, the operations made, the shortcomings has made a number of generals, colonels very concerned as to why the Prime Minister was publicly saying about it from the NA tribune.

Moreover, according to the news we received, the high-ranking military officials have discussed that this public dispute between the former chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the prime minister will not lead to a good place and will pose new challenges to the army.

We learned from well-informed sources that on March 22, when RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan introduced Artak Davtyan [the new chief of the General Staff] to the RA Armed Forces command, during a closed discussion many of the generals asked what fate awaited them, whether they were going to be included in any criminal cases or be tried in connection with the 44-day war.

[But] Pashinyan assured [them] that no fact-finding group will be set up, no investigation will be carried out, everyone can peacefully carry out their functions. Moreover, according to the same information, Pashinyan had noted that they could hold internal discussions and decide among themselves where, who, how made mistakes, draw a conclusion. And the command staff of the Armed Forces, being confident that everything was fine, had calmed down and gone to its work.

But it can be said that the MOD and the Armed Forces makeup are alarmed by the prime minister’s speech the day before, as sharp turns are possible in the near future.