make preferableArmenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of Armenia-related top news as of 08.02.22:
- The Investigative Committee of Armenia has not filed a criminal case against the eight prisoners of war (POWs) who were returned to Armenia Monday from Azerbaijan, and all of them have been released, the committee's press secretary, Vardan Tadevosyan, told Armenian News-NEWS.am.
He added that six of these POWs were released Monday, while the other two—who are conscripts—were transferred to Military Police to resolve the matter of their future military service.
Commenting on the reports that these POWs were questioned in a tense atmosphere, Tadevosyan said that their questioning had lasted for about seven hours, during which their parents were emotional.
"The reports that the parents broke the windows are false," he noted.
- After returning eight Armenian prisoners of war, Azerbaijan said in exchange it expects to receive information about the Azerbaijani soldiers and civilians killed in the first Karabakh war and presumably buried in mass graves, as well as the location of these graves.
"Both in the first and the second Artsakh war, the Armenian side has missing persons. We attach importance to finding out the fate of the missing. In this sense, the Armenian side did not assume any unilateral obligations," Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vahan Hunanyan noted.
Emerging from a meeting in the Kremlin that lasted more than five hours, the two leaders voiced hope that a solution could be found to the worst crisis between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was ready for compromise and would look at proposals put forward by French leader Emmanuel Macron during talks on Monday, while still blaming the West for raising tensions over Ukraine.
Russia and France have also reaffirmed the importance of the work of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs in resolving the issues in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh).
The French President noted that some other issues, in particular, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, were discussed during their talks.
"Here I want to express my joy that eight [Armenian] prisoners were released [by Azerbaijan] this morning. Our French crisis center has provided a plane to transport them [to Armenia]," he noted.
- An Armenian judge Boris Bakhshiyan was arrested on Monday in what he sees as government retaliation for his decision late last month to grant bail to an opposition figure detained in December 2021.
A court allowed the Armenian National Security Service (NSS) to take Boris Bakhshiyan into custody.
The NSS and state prosecutors requested a state judicial watchdog’s permission to indict Bakhshiyan days after he agreed to release Ashot Minasian, a prominent war veteran, and opposition activist, on January 26.
Minasian was arrested on December 1 after being charged with plotting to kill Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and overthrow the Armenian government and illegally possess weapons. The National Security Service dropped the coup charges later in December.
Bakhshiyan’ lawyers said last week that Minasian’s release is the reason why the authorities decided to prosecute the 36-year-old judge working at the court of the first instance of southeastern Syunik province. The prosecutors deny this.
- The Azerbaijani government said it intends to erase Armenian inscriptions on religious sites in Nagorno-Karabakh, Eurasianet reports.
The move was justified by the fact that the churches were originally a legacy of 'Caucasian Albania', an ancient kingdom that was once located on the territory of modern Azerbaijan. This theory, not supported by leading historians, has long been promoted by nationalist Azerbaijani historians and is supported by the current government in Baku, the authors of the article note.
Culture Minister Anar Karimov said at a February 3 briefing that a working group had been set up to be responsible for removing fictitious traces left by Armenians on Albanian religious temples.
The USCIRF Chair Nadine Maenza touched upon the topic and tweeted: "We are deeply concerned by Azerbaijan's plans to remove Armenian Apostolic inscriptions from churches. We urge the government to preserve and protect places of worship and other religious and cultural sites."
- In March 2021, a user named Karabakh Honor posted a video on his YouTube channel, which clearly shows that the Saint Astvatsatsin Armenian Church of Artsakh’s (Nagorno-Karabakh) Karintak village, which came under the control of Azerbaijan after the 44-day war in the fall of 20220, is being vandalized, according to monumentwatch.org, which monitors Artsakh's cultural heritage.
The video clearly shows that the Holy Altar of the church tabernacle is broken and divided in half, the inside of the church is turned upside down, the Azerbaijani soldiers enter and leave the church, climb on the tabernacle, desecrate it, and enter the depositories—which are also turned upside down.
- During a two-hour interview with Russian journalist Vladimir Soloviev on February 4, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said the union state initiated by Moscow and Minsk will include most of the former Soviet republics - Ukraine, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and other Central Asian states – in the next fifteen years.
"Armenia can't escape it. Do you think anyone needs them? They have already seen it," Lukashenko said, adding that Nikol Pashinyan has already witnessed this fact.
Armenia has reacted to Belarusian president's statement harshly.
Armenian MFA spokesman, Vahan Hunanyan noted that they are convinced that the unique geopolitical analyses of the Belarusian President are aimed, first and foremost, at serving his own domestic political agenda, and they have nothing to do with Armenia and its foreign policy.
The parliament has also reacted to the statement by speeches from the ruling party MPs.
- Moscow and Ankara have reached an agreement on Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Turkey, but no specific dates have been confirmed, the Russian leader's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday.
“Indeed, there is such a trip in the future. As we have repeatedly said, Putin and Erdogan agreed on this visit. They agreed the visit happen once the working schedule and conditions allow. There is no concrete date yet, but they will be agreed in time through diplomatic channels,” said Kremlin spokesman.
Turkish Presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said earlier that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had invited Putin and Zelensky in a bid to try to bridge the gaps between the two countries.
The Chinese representation in the EU opposes the expansion of NATO and considers the corresponding efforts supposedly undertaken to ensure global security to be useless.
NATO expansion will not help ensure security and stability in the world, the agency said in a statement.
According to it, NATO is a product of the Cold War. The Chinese side believes regional security cannot be ensured by the forcible expansion of military alliances.
