Resmi Gazete, which publishes the state orders of Turkey, has published the order on Serdar Kilic, who was appointed by Turkey as its envoy in the process of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations.

According to the Resmi Gazete, by the decision of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kilic has been appointed Turkey’s special representative for Armenia.

Until now, Serdar Kilic had been called an “envoy” of the Turkish side.

Serdar Kilic was Turkey’s Ambassador to the United States, from 2014 to 2021, and has been active in the denial of the Armenian Genocide. He actively participated in the organizing of the activities to thwart Armenian resolutions in the US Congress, as well as in the organizing of anti-Armenian events and actions in the US.

CivilNet: singled out the statements that did not correspond to the reality of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and contradicted himself. Credits: Ruptly: 2021 was marked by post-war discussions, mutual accusations in the political field, revelations, and inflammatory rhetoric.

During the last year, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made a number of statements and assertions that did not correspond to reality, even contradicting himself. Moreover, Pashinyan’s promises and assertions made in the previous years vanished in 2021. Civile singled out Nikol Pashinyan’s contradictory statements that do not correspond to reality. Water would not become more expensive During the parliamentary election campaign in December 2018, Pashinyan announced that the tariff for drinking water will not increase in the next six years. “According to the previously signed agreement, in December, now, drinking water should have become more expensive in the whole republic, but we were able to work with” Veolia Water “, we agreed that there will be no increase in the price of drinking water in Armenia until 2024.

” On November 30, 2021, however, the Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) announced that from January 1, 2022, the tariff for drinking water will increase by 20 drams, from the current 180 to 200 drams. On the separation of business և policy In June 2018, presenting the government program in the National Assembly, Pashinyan gave great importance to the separation of politics and business. “The following conceptual issues […] the practical separation of politics and business will be of key importance for the government’s activities,” Pashinyan said. Despite that, in the June 20, 2021, parliamentary elections, the list of the “Civil Contract” party led by Pashinyan appeared: businessmen Khachatur Sukiasyan and Gurgen Arsenyan were elected deputies. How much has the defense budget increased? During the June snap-election campaign, Pashinyan claimed that the defense budget had grown by almost 50 percent during his tenure.

“We have increased the defense budget by 48% in 18-20 years by 63 billion drams.” (12: 30-12: 43) In reality, however, in 2020, compared to 2018, military spending increased not by 48%, but by 27%. It increased from 238 to 303 billion drams. The mess of Shushi One week after the end of the 44-day war, Pashinyan insisted that the war could be avoided by handing over the seven regions of Shushi to Azerbaijan. “Could we have avoided war?” “Yes, we could, if we agreed to hand over seven regions to Azerbaijan, including Shushi,” he said. Pashinyan was opposed by the then Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anna Naghdalyan ․

“At some stage of the peace process, there was no question of giving up the city of Shushi.” He was opposed by Pashinyan և Russian President Vladimir Putin ․ “As for the city of Shushi, the issue of its surrender has never been raised […] this issue arose during this conflict, this crisis.” Later, Pashinyan himself admitted that it was not about handing over Shushi, but about the condition of the return of the Azerbaijani population of Shushi. “There was no such discussion at all during the whole negotiation process, not only now, that the Azerbaijani refugees do not return to Shushi. And Shushi had 90% more Azerbaijani population before the liberation from the conflict. “Do you mean to say that the city of Shushi, which has a population of more than 90% Azeri, is Armenian in its status?” Pashinyan stated. Did Iskander shoot? In February 2021, Pashinyan made a scandalous statement about the use of Iskander missiles during the 44-day war.

“Why didn’t the fired Iskander explode or did it explode, for example, by 10%?” Russia countered Pashinyan, claiming that he was not reported correctly ․ The RF Ministry of Defense got acquainted with the statement of the RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan with bewilderment and surprise, that the “Iskander” missiles used by the Armenian armed forces in Nagorno Karabakh did not explode or exploded only by 10%. […] According to our objective and reliable information, […] none of these missile systems were used during the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. ” After this announcement, Pashinyan took a step back. His spokesman announced ․ “As a result of the combination of the available facts and data, the Prime Minister of Armenia came to the conclusion that he was not properly informed about this situation.” By the way, the local investigators found out that “Iskander” was used anyway. About the status of Karabakh In January 2021, Pashinyan published an article claiming that the Russian proposal for a solution to the Karabakh conflict did not mention its status. “Born in 2013-In 2015, the now well-known Russian proposals are finally being formulated, which envisage the return of seven territories to Azerbaijan by the 5 + 2 resolution, the return of refugees, Russian peacekeepers.

in installation. “The package of proposals did not address the issue of the status of Nagorno Karabakh in any way, it bypassed that issue,” he wrote.

Former Russian co-chair of the Minsk Group Igor Popov opposed Pashinyan. “It is not right to claim that Russia has offered to return the seven places in vain, to forget about the status, to rest.” Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazyan agreed with Popov. “I unequivocally agree with Mr. Popov that the status of Artsakh was the most important principle for the settlement of the conflict.” In which area should the referendum on the status of Nagorno Karabakh be held? Pashinyan announced in the National Assembly in December 2021 that the area where the referendum on the status of Nagorno Karabakh was to be held was uncertain.

“Never in the negotiation process” was it fixed in the documents that this potential referendum will take place in NKR. “Do you understand that the area where the referendum will take place has never been fixed,” Pashinyan claimed? Earlier, Pashinyan stated that the referendum could take place in the whole territory of Azerbaijan. “Azerbaijan was able to introduce such a wording in the content of the talks, which will allow it to say that the referendum should take place in the entire territory of Azerbaijan because according to the Constitution of Azerbaijan, there can be no separate referendum on the status issue.” However, both the 2007 Madrid and the 2011 Kazan Principles clearly state that the referendum was to be held in the NKAO in the national proportion before the beginning of the conflict [76% Armenian, 23% Azerbaijani]. State borders are not determined by internal laws After the war, Pashinyan repeatedly insisted that the 2010 law on “Administrative Territorial Division” defined Armenia’s state border with Azerbaijan. During his visit to Sisian in December 2020, for example, he stated: “Today’s borders, the description of the administrative borders of our communities were determined by the law on the administrative-territorial division of the Republic of Armenia, that law was adopted in 2010.” (51: 45-52: 05) The Law on Administrative Territorial Division is about the internal divisions of the state, it regulates the issue of local self-government bodies, and does not clarify the borders with other states. In fact, Nikol Pashinyan often made contradictory statements that did not correspond to reality.

Source: https://www.civilnet.am/news/645455/%d5%b6%d5%ab%d5%af%d5%b8%d5%ac%d5%b6-%d5%a8%d5%b6%d5%a4%d5%a4%d5%a5%d5%b4-%d5%b6%d5%ab%d5%af%d5%b8%d5%ac%d5%ab%e2%80%a4-%d5%be%d5%a1%d6%80%d5%b9%d5%a1%d5%ba%d5%a5%d5%bf%d5%ab-%d5%ab%d6%80%d5%a1%d6%80%d5%a1%d5%b4%d5%a5%d6%80%d5%aa-%d5%b0%d5%a1%d5%b5%d5%bf%d5%a1%d6%80%d5%a1%d6%80%d5%b8%d6%82%d5%a9%d5%b5%d5%b8%d6%82%d5%b6%d5%b6%d5%a5%d6%80%d5%a8-2021-%d5%ab%d5%b6/?fbclid=IwAR1GjIbEhT2sRTWqezOrGVGJu7kFHAt75r11CmVmaexz0cSl6nCWo3ilFEY

Unidentified persons reported a threat of explosion at the embassies of Armenia and Belarus in Moscow, a Russian law enforcement source told TASS on Saturday.

“Yesterday it became known that a letter with a threat of explosion was sent to the e-mail of the embassies of Armenia and Belarus. Unidentified people demanded that the troops of the countries be withdrawn from the territory of Kazakhstan,” the aforesaid news agency’s interlocutor said.

According to him, the buildings of both embassies were inspected, but no explosive device or explosives were found.

By LINDSEY TANNER and MIKE STOBBE

Hospitalizations of U.S. children under 5 with COVID-19 soared in recent weeks to their highest level since the pandemic began, according to government data released Friday on the only age group not yet eligible for the vaccine.

The worrisome trend in children too young to be vaccinated underscores the need for older kids and adults to get their shots to help protect those around them, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since mid-December, with the highly contagious omicron variant spreading furiously around the country, the hospitalization rate in these youngest kids has surged to more than 4 in 100,000 children, up from 2.5 per 100,000.

The rate among children ages 5 to 17 is about 1 per 100,000, according to the CDC data, which is drawn from over 250 hospitals in 14 states.

Overall, “pediatric hospitalizations are at their highest rate compared to any prior point in the pandemic,” Walensky said.

She noted that just over 50% of children ages 12 to 18, and only 16% of those 5 to 11, are fully vaccinated.

The overall hospitalization rate among children and teens is still lower than that of any other age group. And they account for less than 5% of average new daily hospital admissions, according to the CDC.

As of Tuesday, the average number of under-18 patients admitted to the hospital per day with COVID-19 was 766, double the figure reported just two weeks ago.

The trend among the very youngest kids is being driven by high hospitalization rates in five states: Georgia, Connecticut, Tennessee, California and Oregon, with the steepest increases in Georgia, the CDC said.

At a briefing, Walensky said the numbers include children hospitalized because of COVID-19 and those admitted for other reasons but found to be infected.

The CDC also said the surge could be partially attributable to how COVID-19 hospitalizations in this age group are defined: a positive virus test within 14 days of hospitalization for any reason.

The severity of illness among children during the omicron wave seems lower than it was with the delta variant, said Seattle Children’s Hospital critical care chief Dr. John McGuire.

“Most of the COVID+ kids in the hospital are actually not here for COVID-19 disease,” McGuire said in an email. “They are here for other issues but happen to have tested positive.”

The nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said earlier this week that omicron appears to cause less-severe disease across the board, but that the sheer number of infections because of its extreme contagiousness will mean that many more children will get infected, and a certain share of them will wind up in the hospital.

Fauci also said many children hospitalized with COVID-19 have other health conditions that make them more susceptible to complications from the virus. That includes obesity, diabetes and lung disease.

Fauci and Walensky have emphasized that one of the best ways to protect the youngest children is to vaccinate everyone else.

The surge in hospitalizations only heightens some parents’ worries.

Emily Hojara and Eli Zilke of Sawyer, Michigan, are being extra protective of their daughter Flora, who turns 2 in May. They limit her contact with other children, and no visitors are allowed in the house unless masked, not even grandparents.

“It’s been a struggle, and now with this new variant, I feel it’s knocked us back,’ Hojara said.

“It’s scary that she can’t be vaccinated,’ she said of her daughter.

Dr. Jennifer Kusma, a pediatrician with Chicago’s Lurie Children’s Hospital, said she has seen increasing numbers of kids hospitalized with omicron, and while most aren’t severely ill, she understands parents’ worries.

“I really wish we already had that vaccine for these young kids,’ Kusma said. But she added that what may seem like a long wait should reassure parents that vaccine testing is not being rushed.

Many had hoped the new year might bring a vaccine for young children, but Pfizer announced last month that two doses didn’t offer as much protection as hoped for in youngsters 2 to 4.

Pfizer’s study has been updated to give everyone under 5 a third dose, and data is expected in early spring.

Also on Friday, the CDC issued a report showing Pfizer shots seem to protect older children who develop a serious but rare COVID-19-linked condition that involves inflammation of multiple organs.

Among 102 kids ages 12 to 18 who were hospitalized with the condition, none who had received two Pfizer shots at least 28 days earlier needed ventilators or other advanced life support. By contrast, 40% of unvaccinated children required such treatment.

The condition, multisystem inflammatory syndrome, causes symptoms that may include persistent fever, abdominal pain and rashes. Most children recover, but 55 deaths have been reported.

A separate CDC report found that children who had COVID-19 were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes as youngsters who had not had the virus. Scientists are investigating why but say the virus seems to attack insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

___

AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson contributed from Seattle.

Turkish Armenian writer Sevan Nisanyan and his wife at the island of Samos. 

Sevan Nisanyan III

1. Those who call me a ‘national danger’ and try to make me out of the border of Karga Tulumba are not a ‘Greek state’. A nationalist paranoid gang holding their corner heads in Samos Police.

I don’t know how much their powers or allegiance are.

2. There is a lot to be said about the ‘Greek state’. But there is now that in Greece prosecutors, bars, former and new politicians, former prime ministers, right and left newspapers have taken an incredible enthusiasm and clarity, without keeping their words. I think this is an important indication. We can’t imagine such a thing in Turkey. There are civilized people in Turkey, of course, but at the state level they don’t speak; even if they speak, they speak with fear, fear, and forks.

3. Yes Greece is a more civilized country than Turkey. Maybe the state structure is weaker, the division is in the structure. Police, court, police, etc. three or five up are the same: miserable, stupid, humane. There were very sweet policemen, those who were in the mood of “we caught the Turks and suppress the Turks”, “I think this is an important man, I don’t need to get involved”.

4. Armenian Embassy and especially ambassador Mr. Tigran Mgrdicyan made an incredible effort to save me, he worked day and night, he did not leave Iraq alone for a moment. For the first time in my life, I felt that a state is standing behind me, without any condition and without any hesitation. A very different feeling. It was good, I didn’t know.

5. The court ruled that my detention was terminated. The unlimited resolution stands. But I think it will be fixed sooner or later. I may have to leave the country for a while and maybe live in Armenia, maybe elsewhere.It would be good if we could do this and open the door to Turkey.

6. Unfortunately, these are not the main problem we have, but others. We are bored.

A Greek court released on Friday a prominent Turkish-Armenian writer living under a temporary permit in Greece after fleeing a Turkish prison.

Sevan Nisanyan, a 66-year-old linguist and blogger has been arrested on the island of Samos last week and faced deportation. He was detained after Greek authorities refused to renew his residence permit, his wife Ira Tzourou said on Facebook and Twitter.

The court released him on the condition that he leaves Greece within two weeks.

The Armenian Embassy in Greece issued a statement on January 2 that it had sent a representative to the prison where Nisanyan was being held. It added that since Nisanyan is an Armenian citizen he would be welcomed back to Armenia.

In a Facebook post on Friday, Nisanyan wrote, “I have been released from custody after eight days in jail. 

“Great thanks to everyone who sent their love and encouragement during these difficult days.”

Turkish-Armenian writer had been jailed in Turkey

The Turkish-Armenian writer had been jailed in Turkey in 2014 on charges of illegal construction, a case he claims was punishment for his outspoken views about restrictions on freedom of expression in the country.

He escaped from a low-security prison in 2017 and sought asylum in Greece.

Nisanyan had also previously been convicted in Turkey of blasphemy over a 2012 blog defending an anti-Islam film that ridiculed the Prophet Mohammed and sparked angry protests across the world.

It is impossible to buy the security of one’s own people at the cost of another people’s blood. World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov wrote about this. The author of the article noted that the events in Kazakhstan are developing tragically. Hundreds of victims are reported among the protesters. Referring to the decision to send CSTO peacekeepers to Kazakhstan, Kasparov said that the actual occupation of the country by CSTO forces began yesterday, which, according to the analyst, actually means handing over part of Kazakhstan’s sovereignty to the Kremlin. Against this background, Kasparov recalled Nikol Pashinyan’s decision to send a CSTO military unit to Kazakhstan,

calling him a “participant in the killings in Kazakhstan.” “Against this background, the behavior of the RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who took an active part in the implementation of the Russian dictator’s program on the occupation of Kazakhstan, thus becoming a participant in today’s mass murders, is shameful,” the chess champion wrote, noting “Pastinfo”. which, taking into account the fact that Pashinyan came to power as a result of a peaceful revolution, makes his actions particularly cynical.

“It is impossible to buy the security of our own people at the cost of the blood of other peoples,” he added. “For years we have heard stories about stable Nazarbayev Kazakhstan from Western” pragmatists-politicians “. By the way, let us not forget that “there was a respectable material basis under the glorification of Nazarbay’s” enlightened dictatorship. ” The author of the article noted that following the footage of the shooting of the protesters, he once again sees the confirmation of the fact that all dictators are the same, in case of danger of losing power, they are ready to destroy their fellow citizens by all possible means. “A separate line should remind about the” Russian liberal society “, which has been waiting for the evolution of the Putin regime for the third decade. “Every year that a dictator stays in power leads to an increase in the number of victims during his overthrow,” the analyst wrote.

Source: https://www.pastinfo.am/hy/news/2022/01/07/l76mhnm53/1328965?fbclid=IwAR2HcqIxA6cue–oahLXDQ0yZrvJElKcCFcp2Twwc59rKtDgjyEzijmeltA

Civilnet,

Despite Azerbaijan’s obvious resolute intentions, Armenia was hesitant to respond militarily. On the first day of the war, men between the ages of 18 and 55 were barred from leaving the country. But no general mobilization was announced, and no decision was made to openly send large numbers of Armenian regular army forces to Nagorno Karabakh. From the beginning, the Armenian leadership tried to get out of the situation with half-steps, apparently hoping that the NKR forces would overcome the main weight of the fighting. Nagorno-Karabakh itself quickly mobilized 90% of the 8,000 first-line reservists. Armenia provided:

up to 7,000 people, not always properly dressed. Such a modest replenishment did not significantly change the situation, did not particularly increase the NKR defense capabilities. It is difficult to find out how many additional volunteers arrived in the conflict zone unorganized, both from Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora. They came in separate or small groups, had very different levels of training, were poorly involved. This replenishment was not very effective.

It has not been revealed yet how the government was implemented during the war and how decisions were made regarding the NKR troops in general and Armenia. In any case, according to most of the assessments, the quality of the decisions made by the top management – their cooperation was not properly organized, the cooperation of the headquarters at different levels was flawed.

The first serious attempt to end the war was held on October 7 in Moscow by the Foreign Ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia. They left from seven in the evening until late at night. As a result, the parties agreed on a humanitarian ceasefire from the afternoon of October 8. Moreover, the exchange of blows did not subside. On the morning of October 8, two hours before the ceasefire entered into force, Azeri drones destroyed two ST-68 radar stations and the S-300PS anti-aircraft missile system “5P58C” in the territory of Armenia, near the village of Kaghnut. It is clear that in such a situation a real ceasefire would not have succeeded. The parties blamed each other for the disruption in the afternoon, and hostilities continued. During that time the fiercest battles were fought on the southern front, in the direction of Hadrut-Jebrail. Here the Azeri group continued to advance along the Araks, beginning to test the strength of the NKR hastily organized defense in the foothills, along the roads leading to these settlements. Fights for the foothills

Read more: https://www.civilnet.am/news/645660/%d5%b2%d5%a1%d6%80%d5%a1%d5%a2%d5%a1%d5%b2%d5%b5%d5%a1%d5%b6-%d5%a5%d6%80%d5%af%d6%80%d5%b8%d6%80%d5%a4-%d5%ba%d5%a1%d5%bf%d5%a5%d6%80%d5%a1%d5%a6%d5%b4%d5%ab-44-%d6%85%d6%80%d5%a5%d6%80%d5%a8%e2%80%a4-%d5%bc%d5%b8%d6%82%d5%bd-%d5%bc%d5%a1%d5%a6%d5%b4%d5%a1%d5%af%d5%a1%d5%b6-%d6%83%d5%b8%d6%80%d5%b1%d5%a1%d5%a3%d5%a5%d5%bf%d5%ab-%d5%be%d5%a5%d6%80%d5%ac%d5%b8%d6%82%d5%ae%d5%b8%d6%82%d5%a9%d5%b5%d5%b8%d6%82%d5%b6%d5%a8/?fbclid=IwAR1t5rj1GAbxHD-RZMgEPdxPuoXX4d4DrGf5zUjZcYGRZ-1qPAVq7FT2YWI

How interesting Turk loving Pashinyan has lots of soldiers to send to protect the Turks in Kazakhstan but not enough to protect Armenian villages from the Turks.

Around 70 Armenian servicemen have been sent to Kazakhstan as part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s peacekeeping forces, Sputnik Armenia reports. Servicemen of the Armed Forces and Police officers are involved in the peacekeeping brigade, the source said.  

As reported earlier, peacekeeping forces of the CSTO entered Kazakhstan on Thursday tasked with the protection of important state and military facilities, assistance to the local forces in stabilizing the situation.

By Kapil Komireddi,

YEREVAN, ARMENIA — Armen Sarkissian, the president of Armenia, is incandescent with rage. “Five thousand brave and selfless Armenian soldiers were killed in this war,” he tells me at his office, referring to last year’s conflict with Azerbaijan and Turkey. “There must be accountability for their deaths.

”Sarkissian strikes me as the only Armenian politician whose anger comes with a constructive program of national revival. The man once described by Zbigniew Brzezinski as the “Vaclav Havel of the Caucasus” radiates no grievances against foreign powers. Where other politicians complain endlessly about being abandoned by allies or stabbed by foreign powers, Sarkissian appears to be animated by the cold Naipaulian belief that that “the world is what it is”: nations that are nothing, that allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. How do you rebuild a nation devastated by foreign aggression and demoralized by infighting?“You begin by looking inwards,” Sarkissian tells me. “You ask yourself difficult questions and make necessary changes.

” And one change that is indispensable to healing the national psyche and securing Armenia’s future, according to Sarkissian, is constitutional reform. This can seem like an odd fixation, and I was skeptical of Sarkissian’s argument until I traveled through Armenia this past summer. The war has exposed not only Armenia’s military deficiencies but also the fatal defects in the national charter that governs Armenia’s unlikely democracy. The current constitution, written in 2015, was designed to safeguard the interests of individuals, not the prospects of the nation. And unless Armenia can entrench the idea of accountability, create co-equal branches of government, and subordinate individuals to institutions, it will remain vulnerable to populism, intrigue, and chaos. Sarkissian has emerged as a unifying father-of-the-nation figure in a land unraveling under the burden of loss and recrimination. For years Armenia’s most respected statesman on the international stage, he has elected three years ago to the largely ceremonial presidency. When war broke out, he activated his extensive international connections to drum up support for Armenia.

Three separate sources told me that India had come close to airlifting a cache of arms to Armenia. But the war effort was so poorly managed that the administration in Yerevan, operating without a command structure, was unable to figure out how to receive the materiel.Sarkissian maintains that this period of “national depression” can be converted into an opportunity for a “national revival.” To recover and rebuild, however, Armenia would have to eschew its historical habit of searching for “saviors” and assume responsibility for its own future — for no amount of foreign support can revitalize a nation that refuses to utilize its own strengths. “Azerbaijan surpassed us in large measure because it has oil revenues,” he tells me one afternoon. “What will be the value of oil in a generation’s time? In two generations?”Sarkissian’s belief in the sanctity of self-reliance and striving, his faith in the perfectibility of the self and his contempt for self-pity, are not ideological reflexes.

They are beliefs absorbed from his own life. Sarkissian grew up in extreme hardship. He was ten when his father died of cancer. His mother, Zhenya, widowed in youth, worked three jobs to give Sarkissian and his sister, Karine, a semblance of a normal life. The Soviet Union offered no avenue for unconnected individuals to rise above their station. But Sarkissian realized he could be the master of his own destiny the moment he was enrolled at school: “The classroom was the only capitalist space in the Soviet Union,” he tells me. “It was pure competition.”And he was so competitive that Soviet grandees showered him with awards and accolades, decorated him with the prestigious Lenin Prize, and even acceded to his request to travel to England in 1984 as part of an exchange program. Sarkissian was taken first to Sussex, where he was expected to spend four months learning English; he mastered the language in two and moved to Cambridge. As a young theoretical physicist, he did research work alongside Stephen Hawking. What he most fondly remembers about his first exposure to the West, however, is the absence of hierarchies in science.

The Soviet Union panegyrized the notion of equality; the scientists in England practiced it. The faculty at Cambridge, which included several Nobel laureates, treated Sarkissian as a peer and consulted him as an equal.After returning home, Sarkissian helped develop an advanced version of the video game Tetris; the fortune it made in the West was pocketed by Soviet officials. When the USSR finally disintegrated, Sarkissian, by then based in the UK, was asked to open the newly independent Armenia’s first international mission in London. It was a provisional arrangement. But Sarkissian’s flair for diplomacy — he went on to open half a dozen embassies across Europe — earned him enough respect at home that he was invited in 1996 to become Armenia’s prime minister. Sarkissian laid the foundations of the country’s intelligence services and advanced a radical proposition intended to dissolve old animosities in the solvent of commerce: an oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey running through Armenia. His tenure, however, ended before he could sell the idea to his counterparts in Baku and Ankara.A year into the job, en route to Yerevan from a meeting in Washington, Sarkissian made a quick stop in London to conclude negotiations on an outstanding deal with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The chairman of the bank, Jacques de Larosière, an old friend, was alarmed by the amount of weight Sarkissian had shed since their last meeting. “Armen,” de Larosière said, “I will sign this deal only if you get yourself checked up.

”The next morning, Sarkissian was diagnosed with advanced cancer. Armenia was newly independent and required stability. So Sarkissian kept the news of his illness to himself and scheduled chemotherapy around his work. One evening, however, he spied his son keeping a watchful eye on him while he received treatment — a scene that instantly exhumed memories of his own harrowing childhood, when he had seen cancer devour his father. Sarkissian immediately made arrangements for a handover. He resigned, moved to London and began intensive therapy.Upon his recovery, he deployed his skills as a scientist and mathematician to build a lucrative career as a private businessman during the telecoms revolution. He also did stints in between as Armenia’s ambassador to the UK — making him one of the longest-serving representatives of any country to London. He returned so frequently to the post that Queen Elizabeth branded him “the champion of all ambassadors.”What makes Sarkissian seem indispensable to many Armenians today is his deft handling of the Velvet Revolution — an upheaval that ranks second only to the war in the Armenian pantheon of recent political turmoil. In the spring of 2018, hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the capital.

Led by Nikol Pashinyan, then an anti-corruption activist and parliamentarian, they demanded the resignation of Armenia’s longtime president, Serzh Sargsyan. Barred by law from a third term, Sargsyan had rewritten the constitution in 2015, transferred executive power to the prime ministership, and engineered his election to the newly empowered office when his presidential term ended in 2018.The brazenness of the power grab provoked a mass uprising. Everybody expected tanks to roll into the capital, as they had a decade before. It was Sarkissian, according to supporters of the revolution, who averted a massacre. “Without him, we would have had a repeat of 2008, when tanks were brought to the center of Yerevan and ten people were killed,” says Arman Babajanyan, an independent lawmaker who participated in the Velvet Revolution.Sarkissian sounded out for the presidency in the hope that he would endow an ornamental office with gravitas and dignity, had repeatedly spurned the offer. But the requests intensified — and with them the promise to let him steer Armenia’s foreign policy. He relented in 2018. Sworn into office just days before the protests erupted, the new president announced to his staff one morning that he was going for a stroll to Republic Square, the beating heart of the revolution.

His advisers and security balked at the idea; they could not protect him from the crowd outside.“Maintaining peace and preventing violence were my highest obligations to my nation,” Sarkissian tells me. “It would have been a cowardly abdication of my duties had I stayed in the palace.” Accompanied by a pair of guards, he emerged into streets awash in almost a quarter of a million people. Armenians at home watched in disbelief. Souren Zohrabyan, one of the country’s most respected bankers and a fervent early supporter of the revolution, remembers his elderly mother breaking down in tears upon seeing Sarkissian on the television. “This sort of thing just never happened in our history,” he says. As Sarkissian inched his way up to Pashinyan, the muted jeers that had greeted Sarkissian intensified into loud cheers.The Velvet Revolution had sought to uproot an entrenched oligarchic order in a small nation. Its success depended on more than fury on the streets.

It required also the assent of power brokers at home and the acquiescence of great powers abroad. If the old guard believed that Sarkissian would protect their interests, they were disappointed. Sarkissian returned to his office and worked the phones. He reached out to the head of the Armenian church, held talks with the Europeans and the Americans, and conducted delicate diplomacy with the Kremlin, which had profound misgivings about uprisings in its backyard.Sarkissian’s aides tell me that the president, frustrated by the ancien regime’s refusal to accept reality, threatened to resign if order was not restored before Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, observed each year on April 24. That ultimatum paid off. Sargsyan quit days later, and Pashinyan was elected to the prime minister’s office within a week — all without any loss of life. The Velvet Revolution was not preordained to be peaceful. It was Sarkissian’s intervention that kept the peace.Armenians tell the cautionary tale of the warrior who slays the dragon and then becomes the dragon. Pashinyan, having mobilized the masses against the accumulation of executive powers in the prime minister’s office, quietly inherited those powers.

The promise of constitutional reform implicit in the revolution he spearheaded has fallen by the wayside. It is too early to call the prime minister an authoritarian — he governs with a legitimate democratic mandate — but even his loyal aides concede that he is inimical to deliberation, allergic to opinions that contradict his own and that he has incrementally concentrated decision making in his own office.It may well be that Pashinyan is motivated more by the desire to be an effective administrator than by the impulse to drape himself in power. But the practical consequences of Pashinyan’s failure to prioritize constitutional reform, and his unwillingness to devolve power to other branches of the government, proved disastrous for Armenia during the war. When I interviewed him last year, Pashinyan described the war to me as an “existential threat” to Armenia. Yet his insistence on being the sole decider of the response to that threat on every front, military to diplomatic, did not serve his country well. His skill at dislodging the old regime did not translate into wartime leadership. A tenacious domestic street fighter, he simply lacked the dexterity to marshal international support for Armenia or negotiate with foreign powers.Might the outcome have been different, Armenian officials and sympathetic observers abroad wonder, had Pashinyan put forward his nation’s most valuable diplomatic asset to press Yerevan’s cause at the negotiating table in Russia? Preserving the sovereignty of Armenia, an ancient civilization marooned by covetous powers, has always required a command of statecraft that, not to put too fine a point on it, the prime minister does not possess. As a foreign diplomat in a neighboring country who watches Armenia closely and interacts with its leadership explained to me:Pashinyan is an exceptional figure in world politics for what he has achieved in this part of the world. He is sincere and idealistic, but he can be incredibly persistent and stubborn.

Sarkissian is in a different league. He’s a scientist. He’s a capitalist, but he didn’t have his fingers in the pie here. He made his fortune by working hard in the West, a Soviet Thatcherite who wants to turn Armenia into the Israel of the Caucasus. He cultivated really strong relationships as a diplomat. With the exception of Erdogan and Aliyev and maybe Imran Khan, he can get a meeting with almost any world leader. For a tiny country, that is a huge asset. He was just not utilized during the war. He tried to do his best — he reached out to everybody — but he was sidelined and constrained within Armenia. The prime minister ran the show. And it was, I am sorry to say, a disaster from start to finish. Sarkissian’s office had no real authority. If he had had a say in how the war was run and how the peace was negotiated, I can confidently say that country would not be suffering so much today.Voters in towns and villages in Armenia lamented to me that their president was not on the ballot at the last election. This perhaps explains the reluctance of Pashinyan, a once assertive leader now submerged in insecurity, to grant greater powers to the presidency via constitutional amendment. Sarkissian, for his part, is maximizing the minuscule authority vested in his office. Between consoling families of the fallen — and of those taken captive by the Azeris — his hours are devoted to forging new relationships abroad and luring innovators and investors to Armenia.Last autumn, Sarkissian convened the third Summit of Minds, a two-day conference modeled on Davos that drew foreign politicians and business titans to the spa town of Dilijan, as part of his program to turn Armenia into a major destination. A day after the summit, he flew to Saudi Arabia, where he was received with full ceremony by Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the kingdom.

The visit was made historic by virtue of the not unimportant fact that Saudi Arabia and Armenia do not have diplomatic relations. It was another example of Sarkissian using his extensive personal friendships cultivated as a private businessman to the benefit of his beleaguered country.Perhaps the only head of state who is also a scientist, Sarkissian has embarked on an ambitious initiative to foster a technological revolution at home. The physical foundations of his plan are being laid just outside Yerevan at Advanced Tomorrow (ATOM), a cyber and scientific innovation hub comparable to Israel’s start-up village Yokneam Illit and Bangalore’s Electronic City. He spent the winter touring the Middle East, Europe and Asia to sell the idea to heads of state and investors.Cajoling major IT and tech companies to help develop global centers of mathematical modeling, AI and machine learning inside Armenia has been relatively easy: the Armenian diaspora, one of the most prosperous and influential in the world, has been eager to help. The true difficulty lay in convincing Yerevan to tear down the obstructions that exist purely to create an unfair advantage for Armenia’s tiny ruling elite, who preside over a maze of regulations designed to protect them from competition from diaspora Armenians.Sarkissian’s conception of “nation” extends beyond the frontiers of Armenia to encompass the global Armenian community. What is today Armenia was, after all, once marginal to Armenian life, which flourished in lands now held by Turkey. The Armenian identity — its literature, culture, cuisine, lore — was developed outside Armenia. Historically, Armenians built and administered other people’s countries for them. Constantinople’s most revered architect, for instance, was an Armenian — as was the founder of the Turkish political theater.

Today, however, such expertise cannot be put to Armenia’s aid. For one of the requirements for service in government is uninterrupted residence in Armenia for several years.Sarkissian is aghast that all his outreach to draw talent to Armenia is in the end frustrated by “absurd and meaningless regulations.” A luminary of the diaspora such as Noubar Afeyan, the founder of Moderna, must spend a minimum of five years living exclusively in Armenia before he can qualify for service in the Armenian government. Yerevan would like his vaccines and philanthropy, but not his skill or service. “Armenia is a small country, but a global nation,” Sarkissian tells me. “And this pettiness is depriving future generations of Armenians. It’s madness.” Opening up the government to the diaspora is among the constitutional reforms Sarkissian is championing.By convention, changes to the constitution take effect only when a new president is sworn in. Sarkissian has just over three years left in his seven-year term of office. Armenia, by his own admission, cannot afford to wait that long. So is Sarkissian willing to resign in order to expedite the implementation of the reforms? “Being the president of Armenia has been the greatest honor of my life,” he says. “But I did not accept this job to feel honored. I accepted it to serve Armenia. And I will not stay in it a second longer if it means impeding Armenia’s progress.”

Kapil Komireddi is the author of Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India.