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Wednesday 11 November 2020
With the signing of the peace treaty for Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia loses large areas in the disputed region. Many are against it. You want to push Prime Minister Pashinyan out of office and keep fighting.
Thousands of people are protesting in Armenia against the agreement with Azerbaijan to end the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. In the center of the Armenian capital Yerevan, demonstrators are calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. “Nikol, take a step back!” and “Traitor!” they sing. The opposition gave Pashinyan an ultimatum to resign by midnight. If not, his dismissal should be decided in a special session of parliament.
Pashinyan had signed an agreement to end the fighting with the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan, Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev – and thus sparked mass protests in his country. The police used force against the demonstrators. “Today the movement to protect the homeland begins. We will go to the end,” said opposition politician and former intelligence chief Artur Wanezjan.
Up to 10,000 people gathered in Piazza della Libertà. There have been dozens of arrests, also because demonstrations are not allowed due to the current martial law and the coronavirus pandemic. Several parliamentarians were among those arrested. A government spokesman said the opposition would not be allowed to take power.
Armenia is losing territory
It is not clear where Pashinyan is. He defended the signing of the agreement on video on Facebook. In this way, thousands of lives were saved and a collapse of the country’s army was prevented, he said. Pashinyan himself came to power in 2018 as part of a revolution. Now he fears revenge from his opponents.
The Karabakh agreement negotiated on Tuesday evening provides for the return to Azerbaijan of larger areas that were previously under Armenia’s control. These include important links between Armenia and the capital Stepanakert in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian opposition wants to overturn the point of the return of the territories after Pashinyan’s resignation in a new agreement.
Russia sends 2,000 troops to the conflict region
The core of the deal is that nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeepers will monitor the ceasefire. Hundreds of forces were already in Nagorno-Karabakh with heavy military equipment, as announced by the Moscow Ministry of Defense. The transfer of troops was underway, it was said. On Wednesday, several Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft took off from the Ulyanovsk military airport.
There was still a dispute over the possible participation of Turkish soldiers in the peace mission. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who is celebrating himself as the winner of the war, spoke of a Turkish-Russian peacekeeping mission. Russia, on the other hand, stressed that there would be no Turkish soldiers in the Nagorno-Karabakh area.
In contrast, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Ankara that his country and Russia would set up a center to monitor the ceasefire between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The facility should be built “on the Azerbaijani territory freed from occupation”. Turkey will join forces with Russia to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire, Erdogan said.
On the other hand, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made it clear once again that the ceasefire monitoring center would be located in the central area of Azerbaijan and not in the areas of Nagorno-Karabakh that had previously been conquered by the Azerbaijan. “No, there was no talk of joint peacekeeping forces.”
Ankara and Moscow are planning a joint monitoring point
In the evening, the defense ministers of Russia and Turkey spoke about the new monitoring center, as the responsible ministry announced in Moscow. The ministers had signed a memorandum during the videoconference. The tasks and principles of this supervisory body should be set out in it, he said without giving any details. This will lay a solid foundation for resolving the long-standing conflict, Russian department head Sergej Schoigu said, according to the Interfax agency.
Azerbaijan lost control of the mountainous area with around 145,000 inhabitants in a war after the collapse of the Soviet Union some 30 years ago. Since 1994 there has been a fragile ceasefire. In the new war, Azerbaijan took over much of the area. The country has relied on international law and has seen the support of its “brother state”, Turkey. Armenia, in turn, relies on Russia as a protecting power.
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