Nagorno-Karabakh - The African Mirror

Apr

2021

Armenian PM triggers early election a day after Biden’s genocide announcement

VLADIMIR SOLDATKIN ARMENIAN Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who was swept to power in pro-democracy protests in 2018, triggered an early election on Sunday to try overcome criticism over his handling of last year's conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. His resignation, which was expected, came a day after U.S. President Joe Biden said that massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 constituted genocide, a move welcomed by Armenians worldwide and condemned by Turkey. Pashinyan told Biden the symbolic decision was a matter of security to Armenia after the six week conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, in which Turkey backed Armenia's neighbour Azerbaijan, where…

Nov

2020

By The African Mirror

Armenia fights war with COVID-19 complicated by Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

WORLD

NVARD HOVHANNISYAN and MARIA TSVETKOVA EMMA Mkrtchyan died at home, bedridden and showing severe symptoms of COVID-19. Even though the 83-year-old Armenian's blood oxygen levels were far below normal, the ambulance called by her family refused to take her to hospital. "Even if they had taken her to hospital, there would anyway have been a queue and no places available," her daughter-in-law, Gayane Mkrtchyan, told Reuters. Armenia's healthcare system is dangerously overstretched as it deals with one of the world's worst COVID-19 outbreaks on top of an influx of refugees and soldiers wounded in Nagorno-Karabakh during the region's bloodiest fighting…

Oct

2020

By The African Mirror

New clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh after Washington talks

WORLD

NAILA BARIGOVA and VLADIMIR SOLDATKIN NEW clashes broke out between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces over Nagorno-Karabakh a day after talks in Washington to try to end the deadliest fighting in the mountain enclave in more than a quarter of a century. Azerbaijan's defence ministry reported fighting in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, a part of Azerbaijan populated and controlled by ethnic Armenians. Local officials accused Azerbaijan's forces of shelling buildings in Stepanakert, the largest city in the region, which Baku denied. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met separately with the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia on Friday in a…

Oct

2020

By The African Mirror

Humanitarian crisis feared as Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire buckles

WORLD

NVARD HOVHANNISYAN and NAILIA BAGIROVA ARMENIA and Azerbaijan accused each other on Tuesday of violating a ceasefire agreed three days ago to quell fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, drawing warnings from international groups of a humanitarian crisis. The Russia-brokered truce is buckling despite mounting calls from world powers to halt the fighting, with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo among those urging greater commitment to the ceasefire terms. Turkey and Armenia exchanged recriminations, each blaming the other for exacerbating the crisis around Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but governed and populated by ethnic Armenians. Earlier on…

Oct

2020

By The African Mirror

France, U.S. and Russia to meet on Nagorno-Karabakh amid fears of regional war

WORLD

NAILIA BAGIROVA, NVARD HOVHANNISYAN AND JOHN IRISH FRANCE, the United States and Russia will step up efforts to end fighting between Azeri and ethnic Armenian forces in the South Caucasus by holding talks in Geneva on Thursday, as fears of a regional war grow. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Russian, French and U.S. representatives would also meet in Moscow on Monday to look at ways to persuade the warring sides to negotiate a ceasefire. "We want everyone to understand that it's in their interest to immediately stop hostilities without conditions and that we start a negotiation," he told…

Oct

2020

By The African Mirror

Azerbaijan’s leader says no end to fighting until Armenia sets pullout timetable

WORLD

NAILIA BAGIVORA and NVARD HOVHANNISYAN AZERBAIJAN’S President Ilham Aliyev has demanded that Armenia set a timetable for withdrawing from the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding Azeri territories, and said Azerbaijan would not cease military action until that happened. In a televised address to the nation, Aliyev said Azeri forces were advancing in a week-long offensive to retake lands that they lost to ethnic Armenians in the 1990s. "The Azeri soldier is chasing them like a dog, the Azeri soldier is standing at their posts, we have taken their weaponry, we are carrying out the mission of liberation," he declared. The…

Oct

2020

By The African Mirror

Russia and France seek end to fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh

WORLD

NALIA BAGIROVA andNVARD HOVHANNISYAN RUSSIA and France stepped up calls for a ceasefire between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces on Thursday as the death toll rose in the heaviest clashes around the Nagorno-Karabakh region since the 1990s. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron had discussed steps that the Organization for Security and Co-operation's (OSCE) Minsk group, which mediates in the conflict, could take to end the fighting. Russia has also offered to host the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan for talks on the flare-up of their decades-old conflict in the volatile South Caucasus region.…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

At least 16 dead in clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan

WORLD

NVARD HOVHANNISYAN and NAILIA BAGIROVA AT least 16 military and several civilians have been killed in the heaviest clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan since 2016, reigniting concern about stability in the South Caucasus, a corridor for pipelines carrying oil and gas to world markets. The clashes between the two former Soviet republics, which fought a war in the 1990s, were the latest flare-up of a long-running conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region that is inside Azerbaijan but is run by ethnic Armenians. Nagorno-Karabakh said 16 of its serviceman had been killed and more than 100 wounded after Azerbaijan launched an…