NEWS.am digest: Opposition forces are active in Armenia after PM’s statement on Karabakh war

Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of top news as of 15.04.22

OPPOSITION IS IN FULL SWING

Important processes are taking place in the opposition field after Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan opened up on Nagorno-Karabakh war developments and noted his responsibility and fault in it.

The PM said he was guilty of not publicly saying in 2018 and 2019 that all friends of Armenia expected it would surrender the 7 regions to Azerbaijan in any configuration and to lower the threshold for the Artsakh status.

And this causes discussions among the Armenian society.

Now the work is coordinated by one of opposition leaders Ishkhan Saghatelyan, who holds active meetings with political forces, Past.am reports.

But this time it is not about discussions, but about the division of the work to be done. According to Past.am, the largest opposition force that has adopted the policy is presenting an effective program.

Sources on the website report that the opposition will soon make a clear call, but before the announcement there is a lot of preparatory work that needs to be done for the fight to succeed.

Resistance is formed on all fronts.

“We must stop this endless chain of losses,” Ishkhan Saghatelyan wrote on his Facebook.

ARMENIAN, RUSSIAN FMS

Russian FM Sergey Lavrov and Armenian FM Ararat Mirzoyan held phone talks on Friday.

The two discussed the PM Nikol Pashinyan’s visit to Russia on April 19 and 20, including the signing of a package of bilateral documents.

The FMs highlighted the future steps aimed at unblocking of transport communications in the region, demarcation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

Reference was made also to the prospects of agreeing upon a peace agreement between Yerevan and Baku, with the assistance of Russia.

TOURS TO SHUSHI?

The Azerbaijani and Turkish authorities have been sowing hatred towards everything Armenian—and since childhood.

Earlier, a respective video was spread in which children in Azerbaijani kindergartens and schools were taught that their main enemy is the Armenians.

Within this Armenophobic policy, this time a group of Turkish schoolchildren were taken on a tour to the Azerbaijani-occupied Armenian city of Shushi, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

They even spent the night there, although earlier the Azerbaijani authorities had announced that they would allow only one-day visits to Shushi.

ARMENIA AMID UKRAINE CRISIS

About 74,000 people have come to Armenia from Russia since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the minister of economy, Vahan Kerobyan, told Russia’s RBC.

He noted that the number mainly includes the Armenian diaspora, while only 1,000-2,000 ethnic Ukrainians are now here.

As for the flow from Russia, according to the latest data, it is about 75 thousand people—of which, again, about half have Armenian passports.

Meanwhile, the minister noted that Armenia has started paying in Russian rubles for the Russian natural gas.

According to him, the pricing is done in US dollars, but the payment is made in Russian rubles.

Kerobyan added that "there is an understanding" that "there is a need to move toward national currencies in the calculations between the EEU members," and "there is progress on the Russian side in that regard."

Earlier,Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian central bank, the government, and Gazprom to present proposals by March 31 for gas payments in rubles from "unfriendly countries," including all European Union states.

Russia is working out methods for accepting payments for its natural-gas exports in rubles and it will make decisions in due course should European countries refuse to pay in the Russian currency, the Kremlin said on March 28.