Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of Armenia-related top news as of 09.06.21:

•             The election campaign that kicked off in Armenia is very disturbing and tense.

Monitoring by the Office of the Human Rights Defender shows that in the segment of social networks where materials with the headings “civil revenge”, “vendetta” and other similar things were distributed, insults, abuse, and mutual accusations were recorded. These headlines prove once again that clauses about non-physical retribution did not work.

The topic of the conflict between the candidate for prime minister of the Armenia bloc Robert Kocharyan and the candidate for prime minister of the party Civil Contract, acting prime minister Nikol Pashinyan is in the context of violence.

The human rights chief of Armenia even noted that during a meeting with the acting PM, one of the citizens said that he was fired because he refused to vote for the candidate for PM from the Armenia bloc.

This statement refers to a violation of labor rights, in connection with which the Office of the Human Rights Defender will send a notice to the prosecutor's office, Arman Tatoyan said.

•             The video has been shared showing an Armenian soldier being beaten took place on June 2 in Verin Shorzha.

A dispute took place between servicemen of the units of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan having illegally infiltrated into the mentioned territory and the servicemen of the Armed Forces of Armenia who were carrying out engineering works. During the dispute, servicemen of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan beat and caused bodily injuries to two servicemen of the Armed Forces of Armenia.

Armenia Prosecutor General's Office has already launched a case on an Armenian serviceman beaten by Azerbaijani soldiers.

•             Private Artur Katanyan, a contract soldier of Armenia who was disoriented on the terrain due to fog and found himself in an area under Azerbaijani control on Tuesday morning, has been returned to the Armenian side early Wednesday morning of June 9 and is in Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

Goris city deputy mayor Menua Hovsepyan had told Armenian News-NEWS.am late Tuesday night that this lost and captured Armenian soldier had been returned.

•             At around 10:35 am Wednesday, Vardan Kochyan, 61, an Armenian, opened fire on the judicial act enforcement officers who had arrived in connection with the demolition of shacks in the area of a garage construction company in Sochi, Russia.

During the respective argument, Kochyan, the co-founder of this company, shot these officers with a gun, Russian media reported.

According to preliminary information, the deceased officers were Albert Aghozyan, 35, and Andranik Matevosyan, 36, who also were Armenian.

•             The Nagorno-Karabakh status issue has yet to be agreed upon, said Russian FM Sergey Lavrov.

The issue of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh [(Artsakh)] should be agreed upon with the participation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, but now the focus should be on the return to peaceful life in the region, he added.

Lavrov also noted that Turkey and Iran's interests are considered when discussing unblocking of regional communications.

Also, the Russian FM noted that the activities of the Armenian-Russian-Azerbaijani trilateral working group on unblocking regional communications is also dedicated to this matter.

"The effectiveness of the activities of the tripartite working group will be determined first of all by the extent to which this unblocking will directly help improve people's lives," Lavrov said. "Both the interests of Turkey and the interests of Iran are unequivocally taken into account in these trilateral debates. Otherwise, that whole unblocking will not have the maximum result."

Furthermore, Sergey Lavrov noted that the activities of the Russian-Turkish center for peace monitoring in Nagorno-Karabakh are a very useful and stabilizing factor.

•             As of Wednesday morning, 99 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Armenia, and the total number of these cases has reached 223,384 in the country.

Also, 11 more deaths from COVID-19 were registered, making the respective total 4,474 cases.

The number of people who have recovered over the past one day is 81, the total respective number so far is 214,690.