Day: May 7, 2024

YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Riot police unexpectedly left a border village in Armenia’s northern Tavush province on Tuesday after its mayor said that authorities suspended preparations for the handover of adjacent territory to Azerbaijan amid antigovernment protests approaching Yerevan.

The village of Kirants was the epicenter of the protests sparked by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s decision to cede several border areas adjacent to this and three other Tavush communities. A map released by the Armenian government on April 19 suggested that Kirants would lose not only much of its agricultural land but also some of its houses and a key bridge connecting it to the rest of the country. The government’s plans have met with strongest opposition there.

Scores of police officers cleared a protest camp just outside Kirants early on May 2, arresting dozens of local residents who prevented relevant authorities from clearing the adjacent area of landmines and placing new border posts there. The preparations for the land handover continued in the following days amid heightened security.

The police presence in and outside Kirants was beefed up further on Tuesday morning. However, all of those security forces, including special police units sent from Yerevan, left the village in the afternoon.

Speaking to reporters shortly before their sudden departure, the head of the village administration, Kamo Shahinyan, said the delineation of the “most painful” section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in the area has been “frozen for now.” “They all have left,” he said of officials involved in the controversial process.

“We have three most sensitive points [in Kirants] and more detailed work will be done on those three most sensitive points because every centimeter matters there,” Pashinyan told a news conference held in Yerevan around the same time. He did not explicitly say that the Azerbaijani side has agreed to delay their delineation.

Pashinyan met the press as hundreds of protesters led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, head of the Tavush diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, continued their march to Yerevan which began from Kirants on May 4.

Galstanyan and other protesters plan to reach Yerevan on Thursday to press their demands for an immediate halt to the land handover which they believe would heighten security threats to not only Tavush but also the entire country. Pashinyan accused them of seeking to topple him with the help of the Armenian opposition and unnamed “external forces.”

U.S. Embassy, Ambassador to Azerbaijan Ignore Baku’s Systematic Destruction of Armenian Churches

The State Department refrained from commenting about a visit by U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mark Libby’s visit to occupied Artsakh and Shushi on Monday.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller was asked during Monday’s press briefing about Libby’s visit to Artsakh—the first ever visit by a U.S. diplomat since the 2020 War or since’s Azerbaijan’s deadly attack on Artsakh in September, which forced the mass exodus of its population.

“I don’t have any comment on that,” Miller told the daily press briefing. He also added that he had “no expectations” from the upcoming meeting of the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, scheduled for Friday in Kazakhstan’s capital of Almaty.

Miller and his wife, Danusia, visited occupied Artsakh on Monday and specifically toured Shushi, where Azerbaijan is actively destroying Armenian churches and other cultural monuments. Yet in his assessment of the trip, Miller failed to make mention of Baku’s systematic effort to erase Armenian heritage from Artsakh.

Instead, Miller had high praise for his visit to Azerbaijani occupied territories.

“I am so happy to be in Shusha (sic) today,” he said in a video message recorded there and posted on the X social media platform. “We have been preparing for this visit for almost two months and I am glad it has finally come together.”

“I was extremely impressed by my tour and seen first-hand how the city is developing. I look forward to continuing my travels throughout Azerbaijan,” Miller added.

In separate tweets, the U.S Embassy in Baku said Libby met with local Azerbaijani officials who briefed him on “development efforts” there and the return of the town’s former Azerbaijani residents. He also visited Shushi’s “Azerbaijani monuments.”

Satellite images published by CHW show the systematic destruction of the Kanach Zham Church in occupied Shushi

The embassy also made no mention of the two local Armenian churches that have been endangered since the Azerbaijani army captured the town in November 2020. Satellite images released on April 20 by Caucasus Heritage Watch, a U.S.-based research and monitoring group, suggest that one of them, the St. John the Baptist Church, known as Kanach Djam, was destroyed recently.

“The church is now gone,” said the group led by archaeologists at Cornell and Purdue Universities.

Citing other satellite imagery, CHW reported the same day that Azerbaijani authorities have also completed the destruction of Shushi’s old Armenian cemetery.

The other, much bigger local Armenian church, the Holy Savior Cathedral — Ghazanchetsots — was stripped of its conical dome and cross attached to it in 2021. The Armenian government said at the time that this was done for “depriving the Shushi Cathedral of its Armenian identity.” Baku claimed that it is simply renovating the 19th century cathedral damaged by Azerbaijani rockets during the war.

Translation: “I will protect him, a very special boy”https://t.co/sEdaLw3jwf

— Cherry (@misscherryjones) May 7, 2024

It appears UK’s Border Force IT systems are down., Causing major havoc at Heathrow in particular. Were they hacked, like the MoD was by China?

— KT “Special CIA Operation” (@KremlinTrolls) May 7, 2024

Defendant Trump is looking guilty and I’m sure the jury knows it too. There are two lawyers on the jury. They will be able to explain to the rest anything unclear.

Guilty as charged. Lock him up!

— KT “Special CIA Operation” (@KremlinTrolls) May 7, 2024