From the editor
Tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians have been fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh this week, passing billboards with pictures of Vladimir Putin as they go. The leadership of the breakaway republic had staked its future on friendship with Russia, but this led to catastrophe as Russian peacekeepers stood by and let Azerbaijan blockade and then seize the region. On Wednesday former Russian citizen and former state minister of Nagorno-Karabakh, billionaire Ruben Vardanyan, was arrested by Azerbaijani forces, and yesterday the Republic of Artsakh’s president, Samvel Shahramanyan, issued a decree stating that the entity would cease to exist by January 1.
The highway out of Stepanakert is jammed with vehicles heading for Armenia
On the one hand it is fair to say that Russia would be happy about the overthrow of beleaguered Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power after mass protests against the previous government in 2018, but on the other it is also true that Armenians are genuinely and legitimately angry at Pashinyan’s failure to save Artsakh and are not demanding his resignation only at Russia’s behest. In an op-ed titled “Nikol Pashinyan must resign to salvage what’s left of Armenia’s sovereignty,” the editor-in-chief of independent website CivilNet Karen Harutyunyan wrote: “Azerbaijan has now breached all of the West’s red lines without facing any sanctions so far on its government agencies or officials. Assigning blame to Putin, Aliyev, Erdogan, or others is irrelevant. As a citizen of Armenia and an Armenian, I can only hold my government accountable for mishandling everything.”
As Harutyunyan notes, the West can hardly be praised for its indifference towards the fate of the people of Artsakh, who have had to abandon their homes and most of their possessions and hope that Armenia will provide them with food and shelter. To add to the misery, an explosion at a fuel depot on the highway out of Stepanakert killed 20 people and injured hundreds more on Tuesday. An unknown number of civilians were killed and injured during Azerbaijan’s advance into the region. Azerbaijan has issued an indignant statement denying that Armenians are being ethnically cleansed and insisting that they can continue to live peacefully under the rule of Ilham Aliyev, but few believe that. “We reiterate that Azerbaijan has nothing to do with the decision by local Armenians of the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan to move to Armenia or any other country,” the statement said. “We are willing to create for them conditions for better livelihood than they were under the hostage of the military junta created by Armenia.”
Meanwhile Sergei Lavrov has warned Armenia about the consequences of attempting to break away from Russia’s lethal embrace. Asked by TASS if Armenia could “lose” Russia, the foreign minister replied, “You know, a lot of people there want to lose Russia and make new friends for themselves… If they rely on the United States, as is directly evident from the statements of many representatives of the Armenian leadership, then perhaps it would be good for them to look at recent history, how the United States treated those whom it sought to take under its wing, promoting its geopolitical interests in areas of the world far from American shores. The fate of all these people is very, very unenviable.”
More pertinently, we have all seen what Russia does to neighbours that strive for freedom and want to join Western alliances. Armenia is walking a tightrope and its fate hangs in the balance. An influx of refugees from Artsakh will likely further destabilise the situation. Russia will always try to take advantage and punish the weak, while yet again we can expect that the West will issue expressions of deep concern and only consider acting when the situation has already taken an extreme turn. Now is the time to show that democracies are willing to be real allies of Armenia, and that it doesn’t have to be tied to Russia forever.
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Ukraine strikes Black Sea Fleet headquarters
Ukraine hit the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol last Friday, apparently with Storm Shadow missiles supplied by the UK and France. The strikes caused serious damage to the building but Ukraine’s claims to have killed the fleet commander Viktor Sokolov along with dozens of other officers were proven to have been exaggerated when Russia produced two videos of Sokolov after the event.
Russia hands out more prison sentences to critics
The supreme court of occupied Crimea has sentenced two Ukrainian citizens, N. Petrovsky and S. Kotov, to 16 and 15 years in prison respectively on espionage charges. The pair were accused of being “SBU agents” who gathered information about the Russian army to use for coordinating attacks and sent it to their “handler”. Little information was revealed about the Ukrainians other than their birth years of 1972 and 1993.
A military court in Yekaterinburg has sentenced Richard Rouz from Kirov to eight years in prison and banned him from using the internet for four years for “spreading fakes” and “calling for terrorism”. Rouz posted on social media about the Bucha massacre and called Vladimir Putin a terrorist. Rouz was arrested with his wife Maria in April last year and she was also convicted but not jailed, after which she left Russia with their son.
In Primorye a court sentenced Baptist pacifist Vyacheslav Reznichenko from the village of Zarubino to two-and-a-half years in prison for refusing to fight in Ukraine. Reznichenko and his wife have a four month-old daughter.
Murderer pardoned after fighting in Ukraine
A man from Perm Krai who strangled his girlfriend and disposed of her body in a meat grinder in 2018 has been pardoned after fighting for Wagner in Ukraine. Dmitri Zelensky was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2019 but released to join the private military contractors in November last year. It has now been reported that he was pardoned in July and is living with his aunt in occupied Antratsyt, Luhansk Oblast, where Zelensky “helps her with housework,” according to his mother.
Wagner-linked plane crashes in Mali
An Il-76 transport plane linked to Wagner contractors crashed on landing near Gao International Airport in Mali on Saturday, with 140 people reported dead, including some members of the Russian mercenary group. It is thought the plane was operated by Belarusian cargo airline Ruby Star Airways. The crash came exactly a month after Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and his top associates were killed in a plane crash in Russia. Wagner has been operating in Mali since at least 2021, fighting alongside the military against armed militants.