Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the digest of top news of protests in Yerevan as of 03.06.22:

  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will attend a session of the CSTO Council of Ministers in Yerevan.

Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the Russian foreign ministry, noted that the participants of the meeting shall sum up the results of multilateral cooperation within the CSTO, and discuss the prospects of further cooperation.

During the event, an in-depth exchange of views is envisaged on the international and regional situation and its impact on the CSTO member states, as well as the improvement of the CSTO crisis response mechanism.

Also, the plan of consultations on foreign policy and security issues for 2022-2024 is expected to be signed as a result of this session.

Within the framework of the session, the Russian foreign minister will have a number of bilateral meetings, too.

  • Azerbaijan has only partially managed to assess the US State Department’s 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom.

Thus, publications in the Azerbaijani media referred to the violations allegedly committed by Armenia in the territories now controlled by Azerbaijan.

Meanwhile, everything attributed to the Armenian side in this report is in fact a result of the war unleashed by Azerbaijan in the 1990s.

At the same time, however, Azerbaijan "did not see" what the report said about the actions of the Azerbaijani side.

There have been numerous reports throughout last year on Azerbaijan’s vandalism and destruction of Armenian cultural and religious sites, as well as on the Azerbaijani government's deliberate actions aimed at severing and distorting the connection of religious sites with the Armenian heritage.

Azerbaijani government actions and rhetoric that the Armenian churches are "Caucasian Albanian" have prompted international observers, Armenia’s officials, civil society representatives, and the Armenian Apostolic Church to raise serious concerns about continued Armenian ties to historical and religious sites now under Azerbaijani control.

  • Armenian businessman and consulting company owner Hovhannes Kamaryan, 62, was shot dead in Moscow.

Kamaryan was shot while leaving a restaurant with a woman. An unidentified person shot him in the back and head, after which he took a cell phone photo of the deceased and fled the scene.

According to REN TV, the murder suspect is 25 years old.

Hovhannes Kamaryan was declared wanted in Armenia for attempting to plot the murder of his rival Rafik Madoyan in 2013.

  • Artur Ghandilyan, an assistant of a cameraman of a local television station in Armenia, has died during filming.

He fell from a building in the capital Yerevan.

Ghandilyan was 36 years old, married, and had a young son.

  • Turkey’s government has sent a letter to the United Nations formally requesting that it be referred to as Türkiye, the state-run news agency has reported.

The move is seen as part of a push by Ankara to rebrand the country and dissociate it from the bird of the same name and negative connotations associated with it.

Anadolu Agency said Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson to UN secretary general António Guterres, confirmed receipt of the letter from Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, the Turkish foreign minister. The agency quoted Dujarric as saying that the name change had become effective “from the moment” the letter was received. Dujarric told the Washington Post: “It is not uncommon for us to receive such requests.