OCT. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian PM Dmitri Medvedev visited Armenia two days before it officially signed up to become the fourth member of the Russia-led Customs Union/Eurasian Economic Union. Mr Medvedev was visiting an agriculture exhibition in Yerevan but, more importantly, his visit will be seen as another show of support for Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)
OCT. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a meeting of CIS heads of states in Minsk, Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon said Belarus and Armenia had already given it aid to bolster security along its border with Afghanistan. Tajikistan wants to join the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union which counts Belarus and Kazakhstan as members. Armenia is joining in 2015.
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(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)
OCT. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An estimated 10,000 people rallied against Armenia’s government in central Yerevan, media reported, the biggest protest since a presidential election last year.
Opposition rallies, calling for the government to resign, are relatively commonplace in Yerevan. The issue is whether they turn violent or grow so large that the government has to react to them.
In 2008, eight people died in clashes between the security forces and demonstrators after elections.
The protest in Yerevan was the culmination of severally carefully choreographed anti-government demonstrations around the country.
And the protagonists were the same. Former president Levon Ter-Petrosian, a canny opponent for current president Serzh Sargsyan, addressed the crowd. He is credited with whipping up the anger that led to the clashes in 2008.
The protesters actual demand are hard to decipher. They, broadly, want their lives improved and the economy strengthen. No easy task for the government which is having to navigate the country through a tricky economic environment.
What is different now is the opposition’s cry that moving into Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union and away from the European Union is partly to blame for the general malaise. If the opposition can harness this, they may make more headway.
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(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)
OCT. 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia will erect a statue of the Russian designer of the Kalashnikov rifle, Mikhail Kalashnikov, in the northern town of Gyuimri, the eurasianet.org website reported. Gyuimri is the site of the Russian military base. Kalashnikov died in 2013. Russians consider his rifle to be one of their greatest inventions.
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(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)
OCT. 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s government approved a draft treaty for joining the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union, media reported.
The treaty should be signed by Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus at the end of summit this week in Minsk, paving the way for Armenia to join the group by the end of the year.
This is a critical moment in modern Armenian history. Armenia has been pulling away from the EU. By making the final jump into the Eurasian Economic Union, or Customs Union as it is currently known, Armenia will be confirming its pro-Russia allegiance.
The Eurasian Economic Union is mainly an economic union although it brings with it a more pro-Russia general alliance. And with Russia’s involvement in Ukraine that is, currently, a controversial stance.
But Armenia sees itself as having few options. It is surrounded by enemies and needs Russian support to bolster both its economy and military.
Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of the Russian parliament’s committee on Eurasian integration, was candid in on the merits of an enlarged Eurasian Economic Union.
“The Eurasian Economic Union will be a powerful regional economic union, which will inevitably expand,” he said according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. “Apart from completely new regional economic architecture, the EEU will certainly become a powerful barrier on the way of those who are today trying to build unipolar world.”
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(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)
OCT. 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Air Armenia has denied rumours that it is facing bankruptcy, media reported. Instead, Air Armenia explained a handful of recent flight cancellations as being linked to technical problems with the aircraft. Air Armenia is a privately owned company mainly flying to Russia. It only started passenger flights last year.
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(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)
OCT. 4-6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A visit by the mayor of a French town to the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, controlled by Armenia-backed rebels but claimed by Azerbaijan, triggered an official complaint by the Azerbaijani government. Tensions are increasingly fraught around the Nagorno-Karabakh border zones.
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(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)
SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The IMF cut its growth estimate for Armenia to 2.6% this year from 3.6% earlier and to 3.3% in 2015, down from an earlier estimate of 4.3%.The downgrades are in line with other agencies who adjusted Armenia’s growth figures downwards because of the impact of sanctions on Russia’s economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenian opposition groups have launched another round of anti- government protests, media reported. Around 2,000 people gathered for the first planned protest in a town outside Yerevan. Six more rallies are planned around the country with a final rally in central Yerevan on Oct. 10.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to Yerevan, Greece’s president Karolos Papoulias and Armenia’s president Serzh Sargsyan agreed to expand economic relations.
The statement was short on detail and mainly forgettable, if it wasn’t for the timing. The visit by President Papoulias to Armenia comes less than a month after Greece’s parliament agreed to make denial of the alleged genocide by Ottoman Turks against the Armenians a crime.
For Armenia, persuading Greece to take this line was a major success. Some countries, such as France, do formally recognise the Armenian genocide but Greece is only the third country to make it illegal to deny that the genocide took place.
Switzerland and Slovakia have also made it illegal to deny the Armenian genocide. France is considering a similar law.
Turkey denies genocide and says instead that Armenians died in fighting between the two sides towards the end of the First World War.
Relations between Armenia and Turkey and are still strained and the border between the two neighbours is closed.
Of course, relations between Turkey and Greece are also strained making a deal between Armenia and Greece natural.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
