Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu met his Armenian counterpart, Davit Tonoyan, in Moscow on 8 February. (Defence Ministry of Armenia)
Armenia has sent an 83-person team of deminers, medics, and an accompanying security detail to the Syrian city of Aleppo․ [Read more…]
A homeless man sleeps on a bench in the centre of Yerevan. There are currently around 400 homeless people in Yerevan, with three-quarters of them living on the streets. (Armine Avetisyan/OC Media)
Yerevan’s homeless population comes from all over Armenia and beyond, but they all have ended up in the same place. There is one shelter in the city, with a capacity of 100, but it is not enough to house the hundreds living on Yerevan’s streets. [Read more…]
Salvard (Armine Avetisyan /OC Media)
The village of Salvard, 220 km from Yerevan in Armenia’s southernmost province, Syunik, lies near the border with Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan. With no gas connection and just a dirt road leading to the village, for years the young have migrated away; the local residents who have remained behind say the village is dying.
Thomas de Waal is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, a London-based think tank.
Thomas de Waal, senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and a prolific writer on the South Caucasus recently sat down with OC Media. He discussed democracy in Abkhazia and the international community’s role there, and the recent thaw in relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Javid Agha is an Ankara-based writer and social media observer focusing on Armenia and Azerbaijan, whose writing has been featured across the web including on the BBC. He is editor of Azerbaijani art and culture platform, VarYox.
In Azerbaijan, as in Armenia, remembrance of the victims of past atrocities often takes on a one-sided nature. Despite attempts to twist and politicise such events to serve nationalist causes, a more compassionate approach is needed to move forward, and a remembrance that above all, innocent victims are always sacred.
(Embassy of Armenia in Georgia)
The Georgian ambassador to Azerbaijan has been summoned to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry after reports emerged that a statue of an ethnic Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh war veteran was renovated in a Georgian village. Azerbaijan called on Georgia to ‘take urgent measures’, while Georgia’s Foreign Ministry told OC Media that ‘making a scandal out of this is unacceptable’. [Read more…]
Armenian riot police (Robin Fabbro /OC Media)
Reform of the oft-maligned Armenian Police Force is in full swing following April’s ‘Velvet Revolution’, with reformers frequently citing neighbouring Georgia as a blueprint. While the reforms seem to have made a real dent in corruption, calls to take on the force’s reputation for brutality appear to be gaining less traction.
Having swept to power in a landslide electoral victory, the new government of revolutionary leader Nikol Pashinyan is now laying out its vision for a ‘New Armenia’ — with ambitious plans for peace and reform.
Nikol Pashinyan (/gov.am)
Nikol Pashinyan’s My Step Alliance has won a landslide in Armenia’s snap parliamentary elections, according to preliminary results. The previous ruling party, the Republican Party of Armenia, as well as their former coalition partner the Armenian Revolutionary Federation both failed to gain seats in Sunday’s vote. [Read more…]
Robert Kocharyan (Yerkir)
Armenia’s second president Robert Kocharyan has been re-arrested and remanded in custody over the violent dispersal of anti-government protests in 2008 that left 10 people dead. [Read more…]
