Nationwide raids to arrest thousands of members of undocumented families have been scheduled to begin Sunday, according to two current and one former homeland security officials, moving forward with a rapidly changing operation, the final details of which remain in flux.
The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a powerful amendment introduced by Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) to block the transfer of U.S. defense articles to Baku that could potentially be used by the Azerbaijani government to act upon its threat to shoot down civilian aircraft operating out of Artsakh’s Stepanakert Airport, the Armenian National Committee of America reported.
168 Hours sat down for an interview with Vice-Rector of MGIMO University (Moscow State Institute of International Relations) for Research, Doctor of Historical Sciences, historian and political scientist Evgeny Kozhokin.
Over the past couple of months, the rhetoric about the Artsakh issue, particularly the rhetoric of Armenia’s pro-government personalities and media outlets has sharply changed, and this unequivocally sparks serious concerns. They regularly make calls and accusatory statements that will lead to a deadlock.
French courts are rendering decisions annulling the Declarations of Friendship signed between various French cities and settlements of Artsakh one after another.
According to 168.am newspaper’s source from the Government of the Republic of Armenia, on Friday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan received a letter containing rather harsh assessments from the Venice Commission which, however, the Government of the Republic of Armenia hadn’t published until yesterday.
Let us recall how Azerbaijan acted in the hottest phase of the interior political developments in Armenia — Azerbaijan supported Pashinyan and there was an agreement in Dushanbe. Now, Azerbaijan views that the time for Pashinyan to take a breath is over and is setting forth specific conditions.
“The public also gets tired of ongoing revolutionary ideas and developments. The revolution served its goal, that is, shift of power. Now it is time to end it and start working on a regular basis,” he said.
“Listen, Armenians in Karabakh and Armenia are defending the territory that they want to keep under their control. On the one hand, when Pashinyan issued an order and dismissed the Minister of Defense of Karabakh from office, that was interference with the domestic affairs of Karabakh. On the other hand, Pashinyan states that Karabakh is a separate territory.
“Political stakeholders must refrain from actions and statements that could be perceived as exerting pressure on the judiciary,” said the co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for the monitoring of Armenia, Yuliya Lovochkina (Ukraine, SOC) and Andrej Šircelj (Slovenia, EPP/CD), following the statement by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan calling on citizens to block the entrances and exits of courts, on 19 May. This call followed a judge’s decision to release former President Kocharyan from pre-trial detention.
