NPR News: 04-22-2024 6PM EDT
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Day: April 22, 2024
A convoy of vehicles carrying Russian peacekeeping forces left Artsakh on Monday and entered Armenia via the Lachin Corridor.
Armenia’s National Security chief Armen Grigoryan told Armenpress that the Russian forces will head to Goris and Simian in the Syunik Province, where they will remain for temporary period of time.
Videos posted on various media outlets showed the peacekeeping convoy entering Armenian on the Hakkari bridge, the site of a 10-month standoff between Armenians and Azerbaijanis last year during Baku’s blockade of Artsakh.
“In order to be deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh and carry out peacekeeping activities, the Armenian government allocated temporary deployment sites to the Russian peacekeeping units in Goris and Sisian. The location was also chosen with the aim of ensuring the normal operation of the Lachin Corridor,” Grigoryan said.
“Since the Russian peacekeeping troops are leaving Nagorno Karabakh, they obviously cannot stay in the Republic of Armenia. A group of peacekeepers and a motorcade headed for the temporary deployment sites in Goris and Sisian to organize their closure,” Grigoryan added.
The Kremlin was asked to comment about the Russian peacekeepers’ withdrawal. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, blamed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, saying his decision to recognize Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over Artsakh prompted the early departure of the troops.
“This [withdrawal] corresponds to the current realities that have developed in the region after Armenia recognized the borders of Azerbaijan as of 1991,” Peskov told Russian state television. “The geopolitical realities there have changed, and there are no functions left for [the peacekeepers] anymore.”
YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Hundreds of residents of border villages in Armenia’s northern Tavush province blocked a key national highway for the third consecutive day on Monday in protest against the Armenian government’s decision to hand over four adjacent areas to Azerbaijan.
The government officially announced the unilateral concessions on Friday right after a fresh round of Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations on the delimitation of the long border between the two South Caucasus states.
The four areas used to be occupied by small Azerbaijani villages captured by Armenian forces in 1991-1992. For its part, Azerbaijan seized at the time large swathes of agricultural land belonging to several Tavush villages. None of that land will be given back to Armenia under the terms of the preliminary border deal reached on Friday.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan defended the deal welcomed by Western powers, saying that it will help to prevent another war with Azerbaijan. However, many residents of the Tavush villages close to the contested border areas are strongly opposed to it, saying that they would lose access to their existing agricultural land, have trouble communicating with the rest of the country and be far more vulnerable to Azerbaijani armed attacks.
The Armenian opposition groups have also condemned Pashinyan’s latest concessions to Baku, They argue that the areas in question are strategically located along one of the two main Armenian highways leading to the Georgian border as well as the pipeline supplying Russian natural gas to Armenia via Georgia.
Azerbaijan would gain control of a section of that highway adjacent to the Tavush village of Kirants as a result of the planned Armenian troop withdrawal. Scores of residents of Kirants and several other border communities rallied there early on Saturday in a bid to scuttle the land handover to Baku. They were joined by Bishop Bagrat Galstanyan, the outspoken head of the Tavush Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
“The delimitation process must take place in a comprehensive, package manner, with clear rules and maps, in accordance with Armenia’s laws, through a referendum, and with international guarantees,” Galstanyan insisted on Monday.
The protesters unblocked the road section on Saturday night after Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian agreed to meet with the heads of the village administrations on Monday. They blocked it again the following morning amid reports that the Armenian military is about to start de-mining the border areas in preparation for their handover to Azerbaijan. The military did not comment on those reports.
“They told to us to open the road so that they give us an answer on Monday,” one woman from Kirants told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “But they fooled us. We woke up this morning and witnessed another incident. That’s why we don’t trust in their words anymore.”
“We will keep spending nights here,” said another protester. “For a couple of times, police forces came here to try to convince us to reopen the road, but that obviously hasn’t happened.”
There were strong indications of unfolding de-mining work outside the nearby village of Voskepar on Monday. A group of angry villagers confronted military personnel who appeared to be trying to clear a contested area next to a 7th century Armenian church of landmines. They demanded an immediate halt to the apparent de-mining. Bishop Galstanyan also arrived at the scene, effectively urging the military to defy Pashinyan’s withdrawal orders.
Riot police cordoned off the church to keep Voskepar residents and other protesters from approaching it and disrupting the mine clearance seen as a preparation for the area’s handover to Azerbaijan. The tense standoff there continued for a few hours, with the protesters eventually given access to the church.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told a group of reporters from Great Britain on Monday that his government is concerned about the threats being made by Azerbaijan regarding Armenia’s efforts to reform and strengthen its military capabilities.
“We are worried about a number of statements coming from Azerbaijan regarding the reforms and modernization of the Armenian army,” Pashinyan said during a joint interview with a journalist from the United Kingdom who interviewed him in Yerevan.
“If we look at the percentage of the military budgets of Azerbaijan and Armenia, there is a significant imbalance here, but even in the conditions of this imbalance, Azerbaijan is reacting very aggressively to the reforms of Armenia’s Armed Forces and the acquisition of weapons and equipment, although we all understand that these acquisitions are exclusively for defense purposes,” Pashinyan added.
“I have said on several occasions that no country can challenge another country’s right to have a combat-ready military. I think that having a combat-ready army is also important for peace, for creating the right balance of power. And this is also the reason why, when Azerbaijan raises these issues, we also do not leave those statements unanswered,” Pashinyan said.
He explained that the purchase of weapons by Armenia is not more than 15 to 20 percent of the weapons purchased by Azerbaijan, both financially and in terms of volume, and is mainly of a defensive nature and of defensive significance.
Pashinyan told the British journalists that Yerevan has proposed to Baku to create a bilateral arms control mechanism to prevent an arms race in the region.
“We have proposed and continue to propose that a simultaneous withdrawal of troops take place from the border recorded in the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration. We have proposed to sign a non-aggression agreement even before reaching an agreement on a peace treaty, because it is a very simple agreement , especially now that we have put the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration at the heart of our delimitation and demarcation process,” Pashinyan added.
“We are not preparing for war; we are preparing for peace. However, until we are convinced that the Republic of Armenia will not be attacked, we naturally have to develop our defense capabilities,” said Pashinyan.
“Furthermore, I have stated that aside from the 29,743 square kilometer territory, the Republic of Armenia has no ambitions in any direction: neither to the south, nor to the west, nor to the north, nor to the east. We believe that we should build and develop our sovereignty and independence on this foundation,’’ said the prime minister.
Pashinyan also discussed the pending peace treaty with Azerbaijan that is being negotiated, saying that while establishing peace would benefit the international sphere, Armenia and Azerbaijan will the primary beneficiaries of that peace.
The prime minister boasted that, during that past five months, Yerevan and Baku have reached two major agreements, one of which was Armenia’s official decision on Friday to cede four villages in the Tavush Province and receive nothing in return from Azerbaijan.
NATO just turned 75 – amid its deepest crisis ever, no matter what they say. During all these years, we have heard repeatedly that the “Russians” – the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact and today’s Russia – are coming!
But while the Soviets/Russians have invaded other countries, they’ve never invaded a NATO or a neutral country in Europe. And when the First Cold War ended a good 30 years ago, and archives were opened, allegedly no plans were found for an out-of-the-blue attack on and occupation of any such country – but there were plans for how to roll back attacking Western forces if they should try.
If your predictions have been so consistently wrong over seven decades, wouldn’t it be common sense to ask: Why is it that we’ve been wrong all the time? Why do we spend trillions on guarding ourselves against a permanent threat that never happens – a bit like waiting for Godot in Beckett’s equally absurd drama?
The intellectually nonsensical (see later) NATO goal that all members must spend at least 2% of the GDP that used to be seen as a ceiling has rapidly turned into the floor.
And why do NATO countries these years move in the direction of a war economy where guns take priority over butter to such an extent that their economies and welfare will be fundamentally undermined? This will be a main reason they will lose out more quickly than otherwise to the up-and-coming new actors in the emerging multi-polar world, China, India and Africa in particular?
Virtually all that is needed to support those militarism-promoting and dangerously wrong predictions and policies are one or more of these four assertions or mantras:
The Russians are coming.
Putin is a dictator, an evil man.
Look at his full-scale invasion in Ukraine – out-of-the-blue and unprovoked.
After Putin has taken Ukraine, he will not be satisfied but will move on to take other countries.
This is repeatedly stated without any evidence or probability, simply postulated. This is also the scenario stated by the US Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin, in early March 2024 – from which he concluded that “if Ukraine fell, NATO would be in a fighting Russia.” The Swedish Chief of Defence has argued that Putin could do a partial invasion of Southern Sweden (Skåne).
Why is Russia not a threat to NATO or neutral states?
Let’s now go back to the Russian threat that isn’t. Here follow some arguments – with no priority intended.
1 • Russia lost at least 25 million people in the 2nd world war. The Russians know better than most what war means.
2 • Russia sees a need for a security zone of some kind because it is Russia that has been invaded three times since 1812 – Napoleon, the White Revolution and Hitler – not the other way around, but handling an occupied NATO member is not productive or possible.
3 • Russia has the largest reservoir in terms of natural resources and does not need to try to grab those of others – like the US and others the oil in the Middle East.
4 • Russia has learnt from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact around 1990-91 that you cannot follow the NATO countries in terms of military expenditures without militarising yourself to death, i.e. undermining your civilian economy.
5 • That points to the fact that Russia’s economy is very small in comparison with those of the 32 NATO countries.
6 • Russia’s military expenditures were 8% of NATO’s up to its invasion of Ukraine. It is true that military expenditures do not translate directly into capabilities to start wars, fight and sustain them. On the famous other hand, starting a war against an adversary with 12 times larger military expenditures and a vastly bigger economy would be madness, suicide or a Himalayan, fatal miscalculation based on complete irrationality. Putin and the people around him do not suffer from such diseases.
7 • These limitations make it extremely unlikely that Russia would succeed, if it tried, in building anything faintly similar to the US global empire or be an imperialist’ as it is often called. It has a few bases abroad, but not 600+ like the US. Russia is not an imperialist power.
8 • If it invaded a NATO country (or any other for that matter), it would face a new problem: Occupied people will invariably work against their occupiers. How would Russia, with its relatively limited military resources, be able to administer, secure and develop a series of countries – and have none of them or a “Rest-NATO” arm to get them back?
9 • If aggression against NATO or neutral states – or against states around the world – was, so to speak, in the Russians’ genes, why haven’t they done much more of it? In the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet Union’s global reach, particularly in Africa as well as the Middle East—politically and militarily—was much bigger than Russia’s today.
10 • Putin’s post-Cold War Russia has invested predominantly in getting Russia back on its feet after the complete and disastrous disintegration back then – and it has created a society that is admirable with a stronger economy than most have predicted – and also remained quite resistant to history’s most intense and wide-ranging sanctions imposed by EU and NATO countries. Invading a NATO country would undermine or destroy all that.
11 • Vladimir Putin has been president for more than 20 years. If he was a true expansionist or “imperialist,” how come he has not invaded one country after the other – also inspired by the US and NATO countries that have been doing that sort of thing permanently, not the least in the wake of 9/11?
12 • If Russia is such a formidable threat, why has it not built over 600 military bases worldwide like the US and hundreds more to match France and the UK in that field? (See the answer in 13).
13 • While the Soviet Union represented another competing ideology until its dissolution – Soviet Communism, planned state economy, one Communist Party, etc. – Russia today can not possibly be perceived as a systemic or ideological threat.
14 • All Russian leaders, including Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, and Medvedev have expressed an interest in working with NATO, building ‘a European’ house’ as Gorbachev called it. Former NATO S-G Robertson has informed us how he discussed a sort of NATO membership with the Soviet Union, and when Putin raised the issue, he was told by NATO that Russia would have to queue up after little Montenegro. The Soviet Union asked to become a NATO member in 1954, was turned down and then established the Warsaw Pact in 1955. These Russian attempts – in vain, however – can hardly be seen as only negative, more perhaps like a little Western brother who wants to join the larger brother rather than kill him.
15 • President Putin has repeatedly stated that he sees Russia as – at least also – a European culture and state, that without interchanges between Western Europe and Russia throughout history, Russia would not have been what it is today. Western Europeans in NATO and the EU have never had a similar attitude to Russian culture; they had no problem or hesitancy cutting it off after the invasion of Ukraine.
16 • Vladimir Putin has never said to NATO that “if so and so happens – or if you do this or that – Russia will invade your country.” His style has been to appeal to NATO not to continue the policy of expansion; one example is his speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Overall, Russia’s attitude to NATO has been much more defensive after the end of the end of the Cold War than during it.
17 • Whatever you may think of Russia’s President, he is neither inexperienced nor a hothead or a suicidal fool. And he did not fall ill or become a maniac during the day of February 23, 2022.
NATO is not ‘defensive’ and has operated for the last 25 years in gross violation of its own Treaty.
If some or all of the 17 points above are reasonable, NATO has only one task now: Mind its own business.
If you read NATO’s Treaty of 1949 – and you may do that here – it is basically a copy of the UN Charter. It argues that conflicts shall be transferred to the UN and solved by peaceful means, and then it adds Article 5, which states that if one NATO member is attacked, the others shall come to its defence. The alliance’s words are indeed defensive, but since its first out-of-area operation – the ruthless 78 days of bombing of Yugoslavia from March 24 to June 10, 1999 – it has pursued offensive policies and operations in gross violation of its own Treaty.
NATO countries’ massive involvement in Ukraine, using it as a bridgehead or proxy for weakening Russia – or trying to defeat it once and for all – is the peak point of this criminal policy down the slippery slope.
Those who call NATO ‘defensive’ lack basic insights in these matters – or practise opportune ignorance.
An alliance – and members of it – that
- acts way outside its own membership circle,
- conducts offensive military operations far away,
- lacks a legal mandate as in Yugoslavia,
- builds on offensive rather than defensive deterrence,
- pursues forward defence and deployment,
- bases itself on nuclear weapons, and
- insists on using nuclear weapons also against a conventional attack,
simply cannot by any definition of the concept be characterised as ‘defensive.’
This is another example of a militarist humbug. ‘Defensive’ is for domestic consumption; of course, you cannot admit to your citizens that you’re offensive and threatening to others. And no country facing NATO confrontation would perceive it as ‘defensive.’ So, ‘defensive’ is for the NATO world, not the rest of the world.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS)
G7 (Group of Seven) major powers foreign ministers met on Capri Island, Italy on April 18, 2024, and pledged to bolster Ukraine’s air defences to counter increasingly deadly Russian attacks and told China to stop supporting Moscow’s military industry if it wanted good relations with the West!
Foreign ministers from the G7, comprising the US, Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Britain, concluded their three days of talks that were dominated by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. However, at the same time German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was on his second trip (13-16 April 2024) to China!
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba came to Capri in person to tell G7 allies that they needed to send more aid as a result of growing Russian momentum on the battlefield.
The G7 Foreign Ministers:
- The G7 Foreign minister acknowledged they had to do more to help Ukraine, which is struggling to hold off stronger Russian forces.
- Would increase security assistance for Kyiv, specifically bolstering “Ukraine’s air defence capabilities to save lives and protect critical infrastructure”.
- Urged de-escalation in the Middle East, where the deep enmity between Israel and Iran risks triggering a wider regional conflict.
- How to use profits from some $300 billion of sovereign Russian assets held in the West to help Ukraine, as EU member states hesitate over concerns about the legality of such a move. A decision is expected to be taken at a summit of G7 leaders in June.
- The political objective of the G7 is de-escalation. Would work to prevent conflict between Israel and Iran spiraling out of control, while simultaneously seeking to end the war in Gaza.
- “There is no legal basis for China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea, and we oppose China’s militarization, coercive and intimidation activities in the South China Sea.”
- On China, US Secretary of state Antony Blinken said that while North Korea and Iran were the main suppliers of weapons to Russia, China was the “Primary Contributor” to Moscow’s defence industry.
- Antony Blinken said” We emerge from this meeting of the foreign ministers more united than ever!”
The foreign ministers’ summit ended shortly after what sources described as an Israeli attack on Iran in retaliation for a recent Iranian drone and missile assault on Israel. However, skirmishes broke out between police and demonstrators in the southern city of Naples with crowds chanting “Free Gaza” and holding up a banner that read: “Stop the Genocide”.
Germany’s Scholz’s Duplicity Continues
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was on his second trip to China since he became chancellor in late 2021. Scholz’s three-day visit comes at the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Germany comprehensive strategic partnership. Visiting German delegation had three federal ministers and many business leaders.
The US wants the EU to be strict with China. But Europe can’t afford it. While the EU has dubbed China as a “Strategic Rival” on different occasions, it is pursuing a different approach from the US. German chancellor ‘Rules Out Decoupling China’ but calls for quality cooperation.
Despite the political and trade frictions, China was Germany’s top trading partner for the eighth straight year in 2023, with 254.1 billion euros ($271 billion) in goods and services exchanged between the sides. Germany has been China’s largest trading partner in Europe for 49 consecutive years, while China has been Germany’s largest global trading partner for eight consecutive years. That’s slightly more than what Germany traded with the US but a 15.5 percent contraction from the year before. China and Germany as the world’s second- and third-largest economies in the current changing international situation. Just a few days ago, German automotive giant Volkswagen announced a €2.5 billion ($2.7 billion) investment to expand its operations in China. Data showed that China was the third largest buyer of European goods and the most important market for imported EU products in 2021 The facts show that practical cooperation is not an option, but a necessity.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters that Berlin could not tolerate seeing China forging closer ties with Russia. “If China openly pursues an ever-closer partnership with Russia, which is waging an illegal war against Ukraine, … we cannot accept this.”
On trade, Xi told Scholz that their two countries should stay vigilant against the rise of protectionism and take an objective view of the issue of manufacturing capacity, according to the statement. Scholz said, in order for German companies to continue operating in China, “they need the right conditions.” Interactions between the two major economies undoubtedly hold great significance for bilateral relations and China-Europe relations. However, the EU is mulling tariffs to protect its producers against cheaper Chinese electrical vehicle imports, which some fear will flood the European market.
The Chinese statement said, “China encourages and supports all efforts that are conducive to the peaceful resolution of the crisis and supports the holding in due course of an international peace conference that is recognized by both Russia and Ukraine and ensures the equal participation of all parties and fair discussions on all peace plans.” German Chancellor Scholz said he asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to pressure Russia to end its “Insane Campaign” in Ukraine.
US Passes Security Assistance to Ukraine
The US House of Representatives on 20th April 2024 passed a $95 billion legislative package providing security assistance to Ukraine ($60.84 billion), Israel ($26 billion) and Taiwan ($8.12 billion), over bitter objections from Republican hardliners. The Senate is set to begin considering the House-passed bill and the final passage was expected sometime to clear the way for President Biden to sign into law.
The Pentagon says it can quickly get more weaponry into Ukraine once Biden signs the arms package deal. The Defense Department said it has a network of storage sites in the US and Europe that would allow supplies to be sent to Ukraine within days. “We would like very much to be able to rush the security assistance in the volumes we think they need to be able to be successful,” Pentagon press secretary Maj Gen Pat Ryder told reporters.
Ukraine President Zelenskyy said that his country has “A Chance at Victory” over Russia with the new armaments package for Kyiv’s troops that is nearing approval supported by President Biden…The US Army now does not have to fight protecting NATO countries. Ukrainians are doing that (Indication of fighting the Proxy War for the US). And its only ammo that the civilized world is providing, and I think it’s a good decision.” The Ukrainians are committed to repelling the invaders, but the future of Ukraine will be decided not only on the battlefield but in Washington, Brussels, and Paris by the Western Leaders. Serious Peace Agenda discussions to end the Russia-Ukraine War seems missing and appears to be focusing on arming Ukraine on priority to prolong this war, at the first place the avoidable war.
“A Chance at Victory over Russia” – Zelenskyy