Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of Armenia-related top news 24.12.21

  • Today President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev took a trip to the occupied Armenian city of Hadrut of Nagorno-Karabakh on his 60th birthday.

According to Azertac, the Aliyevs attended the opening of a military unit in Hadrut. Ilham Aliyev transferred a war flag to the military unit, after which the Aliyevs and their son were introduced to the training center and tracked the activities.

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin had a telephonic conversation with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who is celebrating his birthday, the Kremlin press service reported.

During the conversation, the readiness to strengthen the Russian-Azerbaijani strategic partnership was confirmed.

Before that, Putin had sent a congratulatory message to Aliyev.

  • We were quite surprised that the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan won the elections in June with over 50 percent support after a war he lost to Azerbaijan, a Turkish official told Middle East Eye, speaking on condition of anonymity, Middle East Eye reported.

“His election encouraged us to talk to the Armenian government about a normalisation because he now has a strong mandate and his popularity indicates the Armenian people also want a change,” the Turkish official added. 

Pashinyan has repeatedly acknowledged his interest in opening the border with Turkey and beginning a normalization process. In the summer, Ankara attempted to make some gestures to the Armenians but was unable to succeed due to “some unexpected” developments, Turkish officials said.

  • By the decision of the Constitutional Court, the August 20 order of the minister of health of Armenia has been deemed constitutional, and the PCR test requirement set by the minister's order is legal, as it is in the public health interest. This is stated on the official Facebook page of the Armenian government. It continues as follows:

In all the appendices of the order of the minister of health, only the phrase "at his own expense" in the sentence "PCR test is carried out by the employee at his own expense" was deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, and this does not at all lift the requirement for employees to submit a PCR test result [to their employers].

  • As of Friday morning, 135 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Armenia, and the total number of these cases has reached 344,261 in the country, Armenian News-NEWS.am has learned from the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Also, three more deaths from COVID-19 were registered, making the respective total 7,939 cases.