At least 50,000 people have fled from their homes in Nagorno-Karabagh into Armenia this week. The exodus comes after the long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan appears to have ended swiftly in Baku’s favor. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Armenia, near the border with Nagorno-Karabakh.
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Category: European Union
European Union news. The place name Euros was first used by the ancient Greeks to refer to their northernmost province, which bears the same name today. The principal river there – Euros (today’s Maritsa) – flows through the fertile valleys of Thrace, which itself was also called Europe, before the term meant the continent
Canada’s Trudeau Apologizes After Nazi Veteran Honored in Parliament
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday expressed “unreserved apologies” on behalf of all of Canada after a 98-year-old veteran who served in a Nazi SS unit was honored Friday in the country’s parliament.
Yaroslav Hunka was invited to the legislature by Anthony Rota, the speaker of Canada’s House of Commons, who resigned Tuesday over the incident.
Trudeau said he had reached out to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was on a visit to Canada at the time, in the fallout of the controversy. Both Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, and Trudeau were present for the incident.
Zelenskyy had delivered remarks before Friday’s joint legislative session when Rota described Hunka as “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero.” Rota pointed him out in the audience, giving way to two rounds of applause from the lawmakers and politicians who were in attendance to show support for Ukraine and Zelenskyy.
Hunka, who is now a Canadian citizen, once fought in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division, an SS unit that declared loyalty to Hitler and battled the Soviet Army for Ukrainian independence.
Rota said that he “subsequently became aware of more information” regarding Hunka’s past and apologized to his fellow members of Parliament.
Rota stepped down after unflinching pressure from activist groups.
Rota didn’t give advance notice to Trudeau or Zelenskyy that Hunka would be invited.
Karina Gould, Canada’s house leader, told The New York Times that had she known of Hunka’s Nazi ties she would “have never in a million years stood and applauded.”
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Slovakia’s Election Threatens to Upend Western Unity on Ukraine
Slovakia is due to hold parliamentary elections Saturday amid fears in Kyiv and Western capitals that the result could jeopardize unity on support for Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion last year.
Robert Fico
The populist Smer, or Direction, party, led by former prime minister Robert Fico, is leading the polls with around 18% of the vote. He has campaigned on a platform of ending military support for Ukraine and blocking the country’s path to NATO membership, while opposing sanctions on Russia.
Speaking at a campaign rally September 6 in the town of Michalovce, close to the Ukrainian border, Fico called for an end to Western weapons supplies for Kyiv.
“Peace is the only solution. I refuse to get criticized and labeled as a warmonger just for talking about peace, whereas those who support war and killing are being called peace activists. We have it all messed up in our heads. We will not send a single bullet to Ukraine from the state stocks,” Fico told cheering supporters.
Military aid
Slovakia has until now been a strong supporter of Ukraine, donating its fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets and an S-300 air defense system.
Fico pledged to reverse such policies. “Why for God’s sake don’t we go negotiate peace? Why do we only talk about how much ammunition we are going to send to Ukraine, what tanks are we going to send, how many billions are we going to spend on more armaments?” he said.
“Why don’t we force the warring parties, use the weight of the EU and the U.S. to make them sit down and find some sort of compromise that would guarantee security for Ukraine,” Fico told The Associated Press in a recent interview, adding that he would oppose European Union sanctions on Moscow and block any application by Ukraine to join NATO.
Fico’s Smer party looks set to fall well short of a parliamentary majority and would need to form a coalition government, giving a potentially crucial role to Slovakia’s numerous smaller political parties.
Political chaos
Fico served as Slovakia’s prime minister between 2006 to 2010 and again from 2012 to 2018.
He was forced to resign after the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova, in 2018 prompted mass protests. Kuciak had been investigating alleged tax fraud among top Slovakian business leaders with close links to politicians.
Since then, Slovakia has undergone a period of political turmoil, with four prime ministers in five years. Fico appears to have regained his support, partly on the back of his calls to end support for Ukraine, according to Dominika Hajdu, an analyst with the Bartislava-based policy group GLOBSEC.
Pro-Russian sentiments
“These kind of anti-Ukraine or even pro-Russian narratives resonate among Slovaks. One factor is definitely that Slovakia has historically had quite a large portion of the society with pro-Russian sentiments,” Hajdu told VOA.
A recent survey by GLOBSEC showed that just over half of Slovaks believe the West or Kyiv are responsible for the war following Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Similarly, half of respondents saw the United States as posing a security threat for Slovakia, up from 39% in 2022.
Politicians have sought to exploit those sentiments, Hajdu said. “Political representatives have been utilizing the war in Ukraine to spread nationalist populism. So, they put the issue of the war in Ukraine into the contrast with being pro-Slovak,” he said.
“Just to give you an example: ‘By providing military support to Ukraine, we are taking security guarantees from Slovakia. By providing financial support to Ukraine, we’re taking money from Slovaks who need it more.’ So, they were able to create an assumption that by being pro-Ukrainian, you’re anti-Slovak,” Hajdu told VOA.
Hungarian ally
Until now, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, has been the sole NATO and EU member to openly question Western support for Ukraine. Fico sees Orban as a future ally, says Grigorij Meseznikov of the Slovak Institute for Public Affairs.
“I think [Fico] is not brave enough to become a single dissident. But now that he’s got Orban, he’s got a solid point to adhere to. So, he will join Orban. He has become very authentically pro-Russian and spreads Russian narratives,” Meseznikov told The Associated Press.
Domino effect
In several other Western countries, populist parties skeptical of the West’s military aid to Ukraine enjoy significant public support, Hajdu said.
“I’m afraid it might cause a bit of a domino effect, especially in countries that are awaiting elections. We’re already seeing in Poland that the issue of support for Ukraine is being brought up,” Hajdu said. Poland is due to hold elections October 15.
The Progressive Slovakia party, led by the current vice president of the European Parliament, Michal Simecka, is polling just behind Fico’s Smer party. Simecka is strongly pro-Western and supports military aid for Ukraine.
Analysts say that coalition negotiations will be difficult for any party and that the elections are unlikely to end Slovakia’s political turmoil.
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Slovakia’s Election Threatens Western Unity on Ukraine
Robert Fico — whose party appears tied for the lead in Slovakia’s parliamentary election on Saturday — says he would end military support for Ukraine and block the country’s path to NATO membership, while opposing sanctions on Russia. As Henry Ridgwell reports, Ukraine’s Western allies fear a Fico victory could prompt other countries to question their support for Kyiv following Russia’s 2022 invasion.
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Russia Accuses US, Britain of Helping Ukraine in Crimea Missile Attack
Russia Wednesday accused the United States and Britain of helping Ukraine carry out an attack last week against the headquarters Russian Black Sea fleet in Russia-occupied Crimea.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing that the attack was “planned in advance using Western intelligence means, NATO satellite assets, and reconnaissance planes.”
Zakharova also said U.S. and British intelligence helped coordinate the missile strike.
While the U.S. and other Western partners have provided military equipment and training to Ukraine, U.S. officials have previously denied playing a direct role in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion.
When Russia accused the United States of being involved in a May drone attack on the Kremlin, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby called the claim “ludicrous.”
A television channel run by Russia’s Defense Ministry broadcast undated video Wednesday showing Adm. Viktor Sokolov, the leader of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, saying the fleet was performing successfully.
It was the second consecutive day in which video of Sokolov appeared on Russian television, following a Ukrainian claim that he was killed in the Crimea missile strike.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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US, Germany Call for Observers in Nagorno-Karabakh
The United States and Germany added to calls for international observers to be allowed into the Nagorno-Karabakh region, as Azerbaijan said Wednesday that 192 of its soldiers were killed in an operation to retake the area from ethnic Armenian separatists.
The U.S. State Department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev in a phone call to assure people in Nagorno-Karabakh their rights will be protected and to allow for humanitarian access to the region.
“The secretary urged President Aliyev to commit to broad amnesty and allow an international observer mission into Nagorno-Karabakh, and noted the President’s public commitments to help build a future for all those in Nagorno-Karabakh based on peace, mutual understanding, and mutual respect,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Aliyev’s office said he told Blinken “that respective activities are underway to ensure the rights of Armenian residents living in the Karabakh region” and that Azerbaijan’s forces targeted only military facilities in the 24-hour operation last week.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Wednesday that allowing monitors into the region “would be proof of confidence that Azerbaijan is serious about its commitments on the security and the wellbeing of people in Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Baerbock also announced Germany would more than double the humanitarian aid it is providing through the International Red Cross, boosting the funding to more than $5 million.
Azerbaijan’s offensive has pushed thousands of ethnic Armenians to flee Nagorno-Karabakh, which is entirely within Azerbaijan but had been under ethnic Armenian control since 1994, until parts of it were reclaimed by Azerbaijan during a war in 2020.
More than 43,000 people had arrived in Armenia by early Wednesday.
Separatist officials said the casualties on their side included more than 200 dead and 400 injured.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
your ad here6 Young Climate Activists Take on 32 European Nations
Six young people from Portugal will argue that governments across Europe aren’t doing enough to protect people from the harms of climate change at the European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday, in the latest and largest instance of activists taking governments to court to force climate action.
The lawyers representing the young adults and children claim that the 32 European governments they’re suing have failed to adequately address global warming and therefore violated some of their fundamental rights.
“We’ve put forward evidence to show that it’s within the power of states to do vastly more to adjust their emissions, and they are choosing not do it,” lawyer Gerry Liston told The Associated Press at the start of the day-long hearing.
Although there have been successful climate cases at national and regional levels — young environmentalists recently won a similar case in Montana — the activists’ legal team said that because national jurisdictions did not go far enough to protect their rights, the group felt compelled to take the matter to the Strasbourg-based court.
Arguing that their rights to life, to privacy and family life, and to be free from discrimination are being violated, they hope a favorable ruling will force the 27 EU member countries, as well as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Russia and Turkey, to accelerate their climate efforts such as building renewable infrastructure and reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.
The court’s rulings are legally binding on member countries, and failure to comply makes authorities liable for hefty fines decided by the court.
“This judgement would act like a binding treaty imposed by the court on the respondents, requiring them to rapidly accelerate their climate mitigation efforts,” Liston said. “In legal terms, it would be a gamechanger.”
Liston said a ruling in favor of the group would also help future climate cases taken at domestic level by providing guidance to national courts.
But the plaintiffs — who are between 11 and 24 years of age and are not seeking financial compensation — will need to convince judges that they have been sufficiently affected to be considered as victims. The group will also need to prove to the courts that governments have a legal duty to make sure global warming is held to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times in line with the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
“We have put forward evidence before the court that all of the respondents’ state climate policies are aligned to 3 degrees (Celsius) of warming within the lifetime of the applicants, or in the case of some states, worse than that,” Liston said. “”No state has put forward evidence to counter that position.”
Science is on the activists’ side.
The world is way off track on limiting warming to 1.5 C, scientists say, with global average temperatures projected to rise by 2 to 4 degrees C by 2100 on current trajectories of warming and emissions reductions plans.
As the world warms, climate scientists predict more frequent and more extreme weather events, from heavier flooding and rainfall to prolonged droughts and heat waves and increasingly intense storms.
The activists said climate change affects their daily lives and their studies, and damages both their physical and psychological well-being.
They started judicial action in the wake of a series of deadly wildfires in central Portugal in 2017, where four of them live.
“It’s 43 degrees one day, and the next it’s hail, and that’s dangerous because we can’t predict what’s going to happen,” said 15-year-old André Oliveira, adding that the heat wave that hit Portugal in May hindered his schoolwork.
“I had exams and I tried to study for them, but it’s hard to concentrate,” André said. And it’s not just the physical effects, he said. “The climate crisis affects our mental health because it makes us worried about our future. How could we not be scared?”
André’s sister, Sofia, said her brother suffers from asthma and couldn’t go outside without feeling suffocated when temperatures hit an unusually warm 30 C in winter this year.
“Governments around the world have the power to stop this, and Europe’s governments are choosing not to stop this,” said 23-year-old Catarina dos Santos Mota, another member of the group. “Since we started our action, we have felt the impact of the climate crisis getting worse and worse. In 2023, July was the hottest month on record. It is terrifying to think this is just the beginning.”
It’s the first climate case to be filed with the court. Two other climate cases — one by an association of senior women against Switzerland, the other by a French lawmaker against France — have been brought before the court since.
Members of the association of elderly people traveled to Strasbourg in support of the young Portuguese. They stood in front of the courthouse before the hearing, alongside a few dozens of other supporters.
“I wish them a future, because they are very young. When they saw everything burning around them, all the catastrophes, they realized they would not have a future,” said Anne Mahrer, the group’s co-president. “We probably won’t be there to see it, but if we win, everybody wins.”
A decision is not expected for several months. It’s still unclear whether the court will deliver its ruling on all three climate cases at the same time.
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US Ramps Up Diplomacy, Humanitarian Aid for Nagorno-Karabakh’s Displaced
The United States government ramped up its diplomatic efforts and humanitarian assistance for thousands of ethnic Armenians fleeing the Nagorno-Karabakh region. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports on how the crisis is evolving, after Azerbaijan regained control last week of the breakaway territory.
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Ukrainian Female Soldiers Get First Official Women’s Uniforms
Forty-two thousand women serve in the Ukrainian military, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense recently officially approved a female uniform. Lesia Bakalets has the story from Kyiv. VOA footage by Yevhenii Shynkar.
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Russian Court Rejects Navalny’s Appeal Against 19-Year Prison Term
A Russian court on Tuesday rejected Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny’s appeal against a decision to imprison him on extremism charges for almost two decades.
On August 4, judges of the Moscow City Court convicted Navalny on extremism charges and sentenced him to 19 years in prison, ruling that his previously handed prison sentences will be served concurrently in Russia’s harshest prison regime. Navalny, his allies, rights groups and Western governments say all charges are politically motivated.
The first appeals court in Moscow upheld the sentence on Tuesday at a hearing held behind closed doors. Only the reading of the verdict was public. Navalny, who has accused the Kremlin of seeking to keep him behind bars for life and to keep Russians from voicing dissent, participated in the proceedings via video link.
The charges against Navalny are widely seen as retribution for his efforts to expose what he describes as the pervasive lawlessness, corruption and repression by President Vladimir Putin and his political system.
Navalny was Russia’s loudest opposition voice over the last decade and galvanized huge anti-government rallies before he was jailed.
The 47-year-old threatened the Kremlin by establishing a network of political offices across the country and a corruption watchdog that brought credible graft allegations against political elites.
He was jailed in 2021 after arriving in Moscow from Germany, where he had been recovering from a poisoning attack he blamed on the Kremlin.
The ruling last month came a year and a half into Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, which brought with it an unprecedented crackdown on dissenting voices. Navalny has repeatedly spoken out against the military campaign.
Navalny, who has complained of a series of health complications — and undertook a weekslong hunger strike — is being held in the IK-6 penal colony, 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Moscow.
Allies say his health has taken a further hit in recent months, during which he has been in and out of solitary confinement. Ahead of the appeal, prison authorities placed Navalny in a detention cell for the 20th time, his team said.
In August the court also ruled to send Navalny to a “special regime” colony, a maximum-security facility reserved for dangerous criminals that will cut him off from the outside world.
The “special regime” prison is a system in which inmates stay in cells either alone, in pairs or in fours. The cells have additional metal bars on windows and doors, nonstop lighting, and video surveillance. Inmates can request one or two hours of walking outside in specially fenced cubes where there is no direct sunlight.
Special regime inmates are not allowed to communicate with friends or relatives and can have no visits in the first 10 years of their sentences.
Some information came from Agence France-Presse.
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Spain Charges Pop Singer Shakira With Tax Evasion for Second Time
Spanish prosecutors have charged pop star Shakira with failing to pay $7.1 million in tax on her 2018 income, authorities said Tuesday, in Spain’s latest fiscal allegations against the Colombian singer.
Shakira is alleged to have used an offshore company based in a tax haven to avoid paying the tax, Barcelona prosecutors said in a statement.
She has been notified of the charges in Miami, where she lives, according to the statement.
Shakira is already due to be tried in Barcelona on November 20 in a separate case that hinges on where she lived between 2012-14. In that case, prosecutors allege she failed to pay $15.4 million in tax.
Prosecutors in Barcelona have alleged the Grammy winner spent more than half of the 2012-14 period in Spain and therefore should have paid taxes in the country, even though her official residence was in the Bahamas.
Spanish tax officials opened the latest case against Shakira last July. After reviewing the evidence gathered over the last two months, prosecutors have decided to bring charges. No date for a trial was set.
The public relations firm that previously has handled Shakira’s affairs, Llorente y Cuenca, made no immediate comment.
Last July, it said the artist had “always acted in concordance with the law and on the advice of her financial advisers.”
Shakira, whose full name is Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, has been linked to Spain since she started dating the now-retired soccer player Gerard Pique. The couple, who have two children, lived together in Barcelona until last year, when they ended their 11-year relationship.
Spain tax authorities have over the past decade or so cracked down on soccer stars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo for not paying their full due in taxes. Those players were found guilty of tax evasion but avoided prison time thanks to a provision that allows a judge to waive sentences under two years in length for first-time offenders.
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At Least 20 Dead in Gas Station Explosion in Nagorno-Karabakh
At least 20 people were killed and nearly 300 others injured by an explosion at a crowded gas station in Nagorno-Karabakh as thousands of people rushed to flee into Armenia, separatist authorities in the region said Tuesday.
More than 13,500 people — about 12% of the region’s population — have fled across the border since Azerbaijan defeated separatists who have governed the breakaway region for about 30 years in a swift military operation, Armenia’s government said Tuesday morning.
Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh scrambled to flee as soon as Azerbaijan lifted a 10-month blockade on the region’s only road to Armenia, causing severe shortages of food, medicine and fuel. While Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of Armenians, many residents feared reprisals.
The explosion took place as people lined up to fill their cars at a gas station outside Stepanakert, the region’s capital, late Monday. The separatist government’s health department said that 13 bodies have been found and seven people have died of injuries from the blast, the cause of which remains unclear.
It added that 290 people have been hospitalized and scores of them remain in grave condition.
Armenia’s health ministry said a helicopter brought some blast victims to Armenia on Tuesday morning, and more flights were expected.
Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev said on X, formerly Twitter, that hospitals in Azerbaijan were ready to treat victims, but not if any had been taken to them. Azerbaijan has sent in burn-treatment medicine and other humanitarian aid, he said.
The Azerbaijani military routed Armenian forces in a 24-hour blitz last week, forcing the separatist authorities to agree to lay down weapons and start talks on Nagorno-Karabakh’s “reintegration” into Azerbaijan.
Gasoline has been in short supply in Stepanakert for months, and the explosion further adds to anxiety about whether residents they will be able drive the 35 kilometers (22 miles) to the border.
Cars bearing large loads on their roofs crowded the streets of Stepanakert, and residents stood or lay along sidewalks next to heaps of luggage.
Moscow said that Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh were assisting the evacuation. Some 700 people remained in the peacekeepers’ camp there by Monday night.
Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous region within Azerbaijan under the Soviet Union, but separatist sentiment grew in the USSR’s dying years and then flared into war.
Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by the Armenian military, in separatist fighting that ended in 1994. During a war in 2020, Azerbaijan took parts of Nagorno-Karabakh along with surrounding territory that it lost of control of during the earlier conflict.
Under the armistice that ended the 2020 fighting, Russia deployed a peacekeeping force of about 2,000 to the region.
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What is Behind Renewed Tensions Between Serbia and Kosovo?
Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo flared anew over the weekend when some 30 heavily armed Serbs barricaded themselves in an Orthodox monastery in northern Kosovo, setting off a daylong gunbattle with police that left one officer and three attackers dead.
Sunday’s clash was one of the worst since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. It came as the European Union and the United States are trying to mediate and finalize yearslong talks on normalizing ties between the two Balkan states.
There are fears in the West of a revival of the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo that claimed more than 10,000 lives and left over 1 million homeless.
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti accused Serbia of sending the attackers into Kosovo. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic denied that, saying the men were Kosovo Serbs who have had enough of “Kurti’s terror.”
A look at the history between Serbia and Kosovo, and why the latest tensions are a concern for Europe.
Why are Serbia and Kosovo at odds?
Kosovo is a mainly ethnic Albanian territory that was part of Serbia before it declared independence. The Serbian government has refused to recognize Kosovo’s statehood, even though it has no formal control there.
Some 100 countries have recognized Kosovo’s independence, including the United States and most Western countries. Russia, China and five EU nations have sided with Serbia. The deadlock has kept tensions simmering in the Balkan region following the bloody breakup of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
What are the roots of the conflict?
The dispute over Kosovo is centuries-old. Serbs cherish the area as central both to their religion and statehood. Numerous medieval Serb Orthodox Christian monasteries are in Kosovo, and Serb nationalists view a 1389 battle against Ottoman Turks there as a symbol of their national struggle for independence.
Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanians, most of whom are Muslim, meanwhile, view Kosovo as their country and accuse Serbia of occupying it and repressing them for decades.
Ethnic Albanian rebels launched an uprising in 1998 to rid the country of Serbian rule. Belgrade’s brutal response prompted a NATO intervention in 1999, forcing Serbia to pull out and cede control to international peacekeepers.
There are still some 4,500 peacekeepers stationed in Kosovo, a poor country of about 1.7 million people with little industry and where crime and corruption are rampant.
Are tensions running particularly high now?
There are constant tensions between Kosovo’s government and ethnic Serb residents who live mostly in the north of Kosovo and who keep close ties to Belgrade. Mitrovica, the main city in the north, is effectively divided into an ethnic Albanian part and a Serb-held part, and the two sides rarely mix. There are also smaller Serb-populated enclaves in southern Kosovo.
Government attempts to impose more control in the north are usually met with resistance, and the situation deteriorated earlier this year, when Serbs boycotted local elections held the north. They then tried to prevent the newly elected ethnic Albanian mayors from entering their offices.
Some 30 NATO peacekeepers and more than 50 Serb protesters were hurt in the ensuing clashes.
Is there a link to Russia and the war in Ukraine?
Well before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin cited the breakup of Yugoslavia to justify a possible invasion of a sovereign European country.
Putin, whose troops illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, has repeatedly argued that NATO’s bombardment of Serbia in 1999 and the West’s recognition of Kosovo created a precedent. He has claimed that allows Russia to intervene in Ukraine’s strategic Black Sea peninsula and majority Russian areas in the country’s east.
Western officials have vehemently rejected Putin’s reasoning, saying the NATO intervention in Kosovo was triggered by mass killings and other war crimes committed by Serbian troops against ethnic Albanians. That was not the case in Ukraine before Russia’s full-scale invasion.
There are fears in the West that Russia, acting through its ally Serbia, is trying to destabilize the Balkans and thus shift at least some attention from its aggression on Ukraine.
What has been done to resolve the dispute?
There have been constant international efforts to find common ground between the two former war foes, but no comprehensive agreement has emerged so far. European Union and U.S. officials have mediated negotiations designed to normalize relations between Serbia and Kosovo since 2012.
The negotiations have led to results in some areas, such as freedom of movement without checkpoints and establishing multiethnic police forces in Kosovo. However, the latter broke down when Serbs pulled out of the force last year to protest Pristina’s decision to ban Serbian-issued vehicle license plates.
After international pressure, Kurti, Kosovo’s prime minister, suspended the decree but that did not bring Serbs back to the Kosovo institutions.
Adding to the difficulty of finding a solution, Kosovo and Serbia both have nationalist leaders. Kurti is often accused by international mediators of making moves that trigger unnecessary tensions.
Vucic, meanwhile, is a former ultra-nationalist who insists Serbia will never recognize Kosovo and says that an earlier deal to give Kosovo Serbs a level of independence must first be implemented before new agreements are made. Vucic has tacitly acknowledged Serbia’s loss of control over Kosovo, but also says the country won’t settle unless it gains something.
What happens next?
International officials still hope Kosovo and Serbia can reach a deal that would allow Kosovo to get a seat in the United Nations without Serbia having to explicitly recognize its statehood. Both nations must normalize ties if they want to advance toward EU membership.
No breakthrough in the EU-mediated negotiations would mean prolonged instability, economic decline and the constant potential for clashes. Any Serbian military intervention in Kosovo would mean a clash with NATO peacekeepers there, and Serbia is unlikely to move in, unless it gains some sort of Russian backing.
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EU Trade Chief Warns Businesses Questioning Future in China
The EU’s trade chief told Beijing Monday that tough security laws and a more “politicized” business environment have left European companies struggling to understand their obligations and questioning their future in China.
China’s refusal to condemn ally Russia for its war in Ukraine also poses a “reputational risk” for the world’s second-largest economy, Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said in a speech at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.
He said transparency and openness were “a winning strategy in the long run,” at a time when trade tensions between the European bloc and China are mounting.
“China is navigating a challenging transition from an investment-led economy to a broad-based economy,” he said. “For this it needs to remain open.”
Dombrovskis’s four-day trip, which kicked off Saturday, follows a report by the EU Chamber of Commerce that showed business confidence was at one of its lowest levels in years.
It also follows Brussels’ decision to launch a probe into Beijing’s electric car subsidies.
The investigation could see the EU try to protect European carmakers by imposing punitive tariffs on vehicles it believes are unfairly sold at a lower price.
Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng reiterated Beijing’s “strong dissatisfaction” over the probe Monday.
“China once again expresses its high concern and strong dissatisfaction with the EU’s plan to launch an anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese electric vehicles,” He told a joint news conference with Dombrovskis following their talks.
“We hope that the EU side will deal with that issue with caution and continue to maintain a free and open market,” he added.
But Dombrovskis painted a more positive picture of Monday’s conversations, saying the two sides had agreed to “resume regular exchanges” over economic issues.
“China’s economic performance is critical also for a broader global economy,” he said.
“We therefore agreed to resume regular exchanges to discuss macroeconomic issues, reigniting the economic and financial dialogue and macroeconomic dialogue will be important in this regard and we look forward for these dialogues in coming months,” he added.
Vice Premier He also said the two sides had agreed to “strengthen communication and coordination on macroeconomic policies, work together to address global challenges such as the international food and energy crisis, and promote stable growth of the world economy.”
They will also restart an EU-China working group on alcoholic beverages, as well as “conduct dialogue and exchanges on the regulation of cosmetics,” He said. Both are areas of discord between the bloc and Beijing.
From ‘win-win’ to ‘lose-lose’
Earlier in the day, the EU trade commissioner said growing challenges for European business in China meant that “what many saw as a ‘win-win’ relationship in past decades could become a ‘lose-lose’ dynamic in the coming years.”
A new foreign relations law aimed, in part, at combating foreign sanctions and a recent update to China’s tough anti-espionage regulations are of “great concern to our business community,” Dombrovskis said.
“Their ambiguity allows too much room for interpretation,” he warned.
“This means European companies struggle to understand their compliance obligations: a factor that significantly decreases business confidence and deters new investments in China.”
Asked about Dombrovskis’s remarks, China’s foreign ministry insisted the country would “protect the legitimate rights and interests of individuals.”
“We will continue to provide a market-oriented, legal and international business environment for companies from all over the world to legally operate in China,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a regular briefing.
“China is not the source of risks, but rather a firm force for preventing and defusing risks,” he added.
The EU commissioner also criticized China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine, which he said, “is affecting the country’s image, not only with European consumers, but also businesses.”
China has sought to position itself as a neutral party in the Ukraine conflict, while offering Moscow a vital diplomatic and financial lifeline as its international isolation deepens.
Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Moscow in March, while Russian leader Vladimir Putin is due to visit China next month.
“Territorial integrity has always been a key principle for China in international diplomacy. Russia’s war is a blatant breach of this principle,” Dombrovskis said.
“So, it’s very difficult for us to understand China’s stance on Russia’s war against Ukraine, as it breaches China’s own fundamental principles.”
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French Trial Begins in Police Couple Killings Linked to Extremists
It wasn’t the deadliest attack in Europe linked to the Islamic State group, but it was among the most disturbing: One evening in 2016, an assailant killed two police officers in their family home, in front of their 3-year-old son.
On Monday, a trial opened in a French counterterrorism court over the attack in the Paris suburb of Magnanville.
The attacker, Larossi Abballa, was shot to death by police. According to court documents, he told police negotiators that he was responding to an IS leader’s call to “kill miscreants at home with their families.”
A childhood friend of Abballa’s, Mohamed Aberouz, is on trial for complicity to terrorism-related murder, complicity to kidnapping and terrorist conspiracy. Aberouz, who says he is innocent, faces up to life in prison if convicted.
The killings came amid a wave of attacks in France linked to the Islamic State group and had a lasting effect on police officers around France. Some moved, changed services or resigned to protect their loved ones after the Magnanville killings.
“All of us are watching this trial,” Denis Jacob, general secretary of the police union Alternative Police Nationale, said on BFM television as the trial began.
According to court documents, Abballa broke into the home of police officers Jessica Schneider and Jean-Baptiste Salvaing before they returned from work. When Schneider came home, Abballa slit her throat in the living room, with the child present.
Salvaing texted her from the office to say, “I’m leaving,” documents say.
There was no response. He was stabbed upon arriving home.
Neighbors called police and the attacker said he was holding the couple’s 3-year-old hostage, according to the documents. He told a negotiator from a special police unit that he acted because the French government was preventing the faithful from joining the caliphate and stressed that he had not targeted civilians but representatives of the French state.
Police stormed the home, killed Abballa and rescued the child. The boy, now 10, has been raised by family members since, and is not expected to appear at the trial.
After more than five years of investigation and multiple arrests, only Aberouz is facing trial. Charges were initially brought against two others but later dropped.
Aberouz, now 30, was arrested a year after the events, when his DNA was found on the victims’ computer.
Taking the stand at the start of Monday’s trial, he told the court, “I want to express all my compassion for the families of victims,” according to public broadcaster France-Info. He condemned Abballa’s actions and insisted on his own innocence. “I hope to be listened to” during the trial, he said.
Aberouz initially disputed connections to IS, before acknowledging that the group corresponded to his convictions while denouncing its extremist methods, according to the court documents.
He maintains that he never went to the police couple’s home or helped in preparing the attack. He said the DNA found in the victims’ home could have been the result of his shaking hands with Abballa or riding in his car in the days before the attack.
Aberouz’s lawyer, Vincent Brengarth, said he would plead for acquittal. “There is no message in which he talks about an attack,” he told The Associated Press.
Aberouz was already sentenced to prison in another terrorism case, for his role in a failed gas canister attack near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Police hope that the Magnanville attack trial sheds light on the preparations for the attack and the methods used by those who plot to attack police officers.
A verdict is expected Oct. 10.
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Burkina Faso Junta Suspends French Magazine Over ‘Untruthful’ Articles
Burkina Faso’s military junta on Monday suspended the French news magazine Jeune Afrique for publishing “untruthful” articles that reported tension and discontent within the country’s armed forces, it said in a statement.
Jeune Afrique’s suspension marks the latest escalation in a crackdown on French media since the West African country fell under military rule last year.
The statement accused the publication of seeking to discredit armed forces and of manipulating information to “spread chaos” in the country, following two articles published over the past four days.
Relations between Burkina Faso and its former colonizer, France, have soured since frustrations over worsening insecurity linked to a jihadist insurgency spurred two military takeovers last year.
These tensions have led to the expulsion of diplomatic officials, including the French ambassador to the country, and fueled a backlash against foreign media.
The junta has already suspended French-funded broadcasters Radio France Internationale and France24 for allegedly giving voice to Islamist militants staging an insurgency across the Sahel region south of the Sahara.
French television channel La Chaine Info, of private broadcaster TF1, was suspended for three months in June for airing a report on the insurgency that “lacked objectivity.”
In April, two French journalists working for newspapers Le Monde and Liberation were expelled from the country.
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UN Investigators Find Growing Evidence of Russian War Crimes in Ukraine
A new report by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine documents a growing body of evidence of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity committed by Russia in its war of aggression against Ukraine.
The report, which was submitted to the U.N. human rights council Monday, presents a picture of widespread violations and abuse against the civilian population and of wanton, large-scale destruction of essential infrastructure.
“The commission is concerned by the continuous evidence of war crimes committed by the Russian armed forces in Ukraine,” said Erik Mose, chair of the commission.
“Well into the second year of the armed conflict, people in Ukraine have been continuing to cope with the loss and injury of loved ones, large-scale destruction, suffering and trauma as well as economic hardship that have resulted from it,” he said. “Thousands have been killed and injured, and millions remain internally displaced or out of the country.”
Russia boycotted the proceedings and was not in the room to respond to these charges. In the past it has denied targeting civilians.
Latest figures from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights put the number of civilian deaths at 9,614 and injuries at 17,535 since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The agency, however, notes the number of casualties is likely to be much higher.
Statistics from UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, show 5.1 million people are displaced within Ukraine and another 6,197,200 have fled to other countries as refugees.
Since it was established in March 2022, the three-member commission has visited Ukraine more than 10 times, gathering information from government authorities and “listening to harrowing testimonies” from victims and witnesses of abuse.
“The commission regrets that all communications addressed to the Russian Federation remain unanswered,” said Mose.
The investigators report that “attacks with explosive weapons in populated areas have led to extensive destruction and damage and have been the leading cause of deaths and injuries among the civilian population.”
They have documented explosive weapons attacks against residential buildings, a railway station, commercial warehouses, medical and other key facilities that have disrupted essential services and supplies.
“In most cases, there seemed to not have been a military presence at the affected sites or in their vicinity,” said Mose.
In Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, regions which had been under prolonged Russian occupation, the commission collected further evidence indicating that the use of torture by Russian armed forces in areas under their control has been widespread and systematic, noting that the principal targets of torture were persons accused of being informants of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Mose told the council that torture mostly took place in various detention centers controlled by Russian authorities and that “the torture was inflicted with such brutality that it caused the death of some of the victims.”
He said the armed conflict has had devastating consequences for children and that the commission is continuing to investigate individual situations of alleged transfers of unaccompanied minors by Russian authorities to the Russian Federation.
“It regrets that there is a lack of clarity and transparency on the full extent, circumstances, and categories of children transferred,” said Mose.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, addressing the proceedings by video link, lambasted “the massive atrocities committed to a shocking degree by Russia in the course of its war of aggression against Ukraine.”
He spoke with passion and anger about the harm caused to the more than 19,000 Ukrainian children who have been forcibly transferred and deported from their country by Russia’s top leadership.
“Ukrainian children are stripped of their Ukrainian citizenship and put for adoption into Russian families,” he said. “It is a war crime and crimes against humanity that also could amount to crime of genocide in line with the 1948 Genocide Convention.”
Mose said the commission also was “concerned about allegations of genocide in Ukraine.”
For instance, he said that “some of the rhetoric transmitted in Russian state and other media may constitute incitement to genocide.”
He said the commission is continuing its investigations on such issues.
“We continue our efforts to collect evidence which may be of use for judicial accountability purposes,” he added.
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Senior US Officials Travel to Armenia as Karabakh’s Armenians Start to Leave
Senior Biden administration officials arrived in Armenia on Monday, a day after ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh began fleeing following Azerbaijan’s defeat of the breakaway region’s fighters in a conflict dating from the Soviet era.
The visit by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power and U.S. State Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Yuri Kim is the first by senior U.S. officials to Armenia since the Karabakh Armenians were forced into a ceasefire last week.
Power will meet with senior Armenian government officials on the trip, first reported by Reuters, and will affirm the U.S. partnership with the country and “express deep concern for the ethnic Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh and to discuss measures to address the humanitarian crisis there,” a U.S. official said.
Power will be the first USAID Administrator to go to Armenia, the official added.
“The United States is deeply concerned about reports on the humanitarian conditions in Nagorno-Karabakh and calls for unimpeded access for international humanitarian organizations and commercial traffic,” USAID said in the announcement of the trip.
The Armenians of Karabakh, a territory internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but previously beyond its control, sued for peace last week after a 24-hour military operation by the much larger Azerbaijani military.
The Armenians are not accepting Azerbaijan’s promise to guarantee their rights as the region is integrated. The Nagorno-Karabakh leadership told Reuters the region’s 120,000 Armenians did not want to live as part of Azerbaijan for fear of persecution and ethnic cleansing.
The Armenian government said that as of 5 a.m. on Monday more than 2,900 people had crossed into the country from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia has prepared space for tens of thousands of Armenians from the region, including hotels near the border, though Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan says he does not want them to leave their homes unless it is absolutely necessary.
Thousands of Karabakh Armenians have been left without food.
The Armenian authorities in the region said late on Saturday that about 150 tons of humanitarian cargo from Russia and another 65 tons of flour shipped by the International Committee of the Red Cross had arrived in the region.
Karabakh has been run by a breakaway administration since a war in the early 1990s amid the breakup of the Soviet Union.
In 2020, after decades of skirmishes, Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, won a 44-day Second Karabakh War, recapturing territory in and around Karabakh. That war ended with a Russian-brokered peace deal that Armenians accuse Moscow of failing to guarantee.
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Some London Police Put Down Guns After Colleague Charged with Murder
Some members of London’s police force are refusing to carry firearms after a colleague was charged with murder in the fatal shooting of an unarmed Black man.
Such a charge against a police officer is extremely rare in England.
The Telegraph newspaper reports that more than 300 officers, about 10% of the armed police, have refused to carry their weapons following their colleague’s charge.
The officers’ move has prompted Scotland Yard to ask the Ministry of Defense for help with counter-terrorism policing. The MoD would provide London with soldiers who would do specific tasks, but not routine police work.
Only about one in ten police officers in London carries a weapon, after undergoing intensive training.
Chris Kaba, 23, was the unarmed Black man who was killed in an encounter with police last year. The Associated Press reports Kaba was shot by single bullet as he sat in his car.
The officer accused of killing Kaba has not been publicly named. His trial is expected to begin next year.
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EU Businesses ‘Questioning Their Position’ in China: Trade Commissioner
European businesses in China are increasingly questioning their positions in the face of tough new security laws and a politicization of trade, an EU commissioner warned in Beijing on Monday.
“European companies are concerned with China’s direction of travel,” Valdis Dombrovskis said in a speech at the capital’s Tsinghua University.
“Many are questioning their position in this country.”
He pointed to a new foreign relations law and a recent update to China’s anti-espionage laws as being of “great concern to our business community.”
“Their ambiguity allows too much room for interpretation,” he warned.
“This means European companies struggle to understand their compliance obligations: a factor that significantly decreases business confidence and deters new investments in China,” Dombrovskis said.
The EU trade commissioner is on a multi-day visit to the world’s second-biggest economy, where he is set to meet senior economic officials and press the bloc’s case that it is not seeking an economic decoupling from China.
His trip follows a report by the Chamber of Commerce of the European Union last week that showed business confidence was at one of its lowest levels in decades.
“For decades, European companies thrived in China,” the Chamber’s president Jens Eskelund said.
But, after three “turbulent” years, he said, “many have re-evaluated their basic assumptions about the Chinese market”.
And it comes in the face of mounting trade tensions between the EU and China, following Brussels’ decision to launch a probe into Beijing’s electric car subsidies.
The investigation could see the EU try to protect European carmakers by imposing punitive tariffs on vehicles it believes are unfairly sold at a lower price.
The day after that announcement, the Chinese commerce ministry hit back at the EU’s “naked protectionism” and said the measures “will have a negative impact on China-EU economic and trade relations”.
Speaking in Beijing on Monday, Dombrovskis insisted China remained an attractive investment opportunity for European businesses.
“The EU and China both benefited immensely from being open to the world,” he said. “Trading and cooperating across borders helped to shape our economic and geopolitical strength.”
But, he said, growing challenges for business risked turning “what many saw as a ‘win-win’ relationship in past decades could become a ‘lose-lose’ dynamic in the coming years”.
Ukraine war
China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine also poses a “reputational risk”, he said.
Beijing’s position “is affecting the country’s image, not only with European consumers, but also businesses”, he said.
China has sought to position itself as a neutral party in the Ukraine conflict, while offering Moscow a vital diplomatic and financial lifeline as its international isolation deepens.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin is due to visit China next month.
“China always advocates for each country being free to choose its own development path,” Dombrovskis said.
“So, it’s very difficult for us to understand China’s stance on Russia’s war against Ukraine, as it breaches China’s own fundamental principles.”
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Turkey’s Erdogan to Meet Azeri’s Aliyev as Thousands Flee Karabakh
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is to meet his ally Azeri President Ilham Aliyev on Monday, as thousands of ethnic Armenians began an exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan defeated the breakaway region’s fighters last week.
Erdogan will pay a one-day visit to Azerbaijan’s autonomous Nakhchivan exclave – a strip of Azeri territory nestled between Armenia, Iran and Turkey – to discuss with Aliyev the situation in the Karabakh region, the Turkish president’s office said.
The Armenians of Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but previously beyond its control, were forced into a ceasefire last week after a 24-hour military operation by the much larger Azerbaijani military.
On Sunday, the Nagorno-Karabakh leadership told Reuters the region’s 120,000 Armenians did not want to live as part of Azerbaijan for fear of persecution and ethnic cleansing and started fleeing the area.
Russia’s RIA news agency cited early on Monday an Armenian government statement saying that more than 1,500 people had crossed into Armenia from Nagorno-Karabkah as of midnight.
Those with fuel had started to drive down the Lachin corridor toward the border with Armenia, according to a Reuters reporter in the Karabakh capital known as Stepanakert by Armenia and Khankendi by Azerbaijan.
Reuters pictures showed dozens of cars driving out of the capital toward the corridor’s mountainous curves.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars over the enclave in 30 years — with Azerbaijan gaining back swathes of territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh in a six-week conflict in 2020.
Erdogan, who backed the Azeris with weaponry in the 2020 conflict, said last week he supported the aims of Azerbaijan’s latest military operation but played no part in it.
Armenia says more than 200 people were killed and 400 wounded in last week’s Azeri operation, a hostility condemned by the United States and other Western allies of Armenia.
On Sunday, Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said it had confiscated more military equipment from Armenian separatists, including rockets, artillery shells, mines and ammunition.
The Karabakh Armenians are not accepting Azerbaijan’s promise to guarantee their rights as the region is integrated.
Armenia called for an immediate deployment of a U.N. mission to monitor human rights and security in the region.
“99.9% prefer to leave our historic lands,” David Babayan, an adviser to Samvel Shahramanyan, president of the self-styled Republic of Artsakh, told Reuters.
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Kremlin Critic and Journalist Kara-Murza Transferred to Siberian Prison, Lawyer Says
An imprisoned Russian opposition figure has been transferred to a maximum security prison in Siberia and placed in a tiny “punishment cell,” his lawyer said Sunday.
Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., 42, earlier this year was convicted of treason for publicly denouncing Russia’s war in Ukraine and sentenced to 25 years in prison as part of the Kremlin’s relentless crackdown on critics. On Thursday, he arrived at IK-6 — a maximum security penal colony in the Siberian city of Omsk, his lawyer Vadim Prokhorov said in a Facebook post Sunday.
Prokhorov said the transfer from a detention center in Moscow, where Kara-Murza was being held pending trial and appeals, took less than three weeks. Russian prison transfers, usually done by train, are notorious for taking a long time, sometimes weeks, during which there’s no access to prisoners, and information about their whereabouts is limited.
Kara-Murza, a journalist and an opposition activist, was jailed in April 2022. The charges against him stemmed from a speech he gave weeks prior to the arrest to the Arizona House of Representatives in which he denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
An associate of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was killed near the Kremlin in 2015, Kara-Murza survived poisonings in 2015 and 2017 that he blamed on the Kremlin. Russian officials have denied responsibility.
Kara-Murza rejected the charges against him and called them punishment for standing up to President Vladimir Putin. He likened the proceedings to the show trials under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Prokhorov said Sunday that upon arrival at the penal colony in Omsk, Kara-Murza was immediately placed in a “punishment cell” — a tiny concrete cell where convicts are held in isolation for violating prison regulations.
Prison authorities have regularly sent imprisoned dissidents to such cells in recent months over alleged minor infractions, a practice that is widely considered designed to put additional pressure on Kremlin critics behind bars.
Prokhorov called the news about Kara-Murza’s extreme confinement “worrying” given his deteriorating health, undermined by the poisonings and solitary confinement he had undergone in pre-trial detention.
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Ukraine’s Zelenskyy Says He Met Top Businessmen During US Visit
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday he met leading American entrepreneurs and financiers during a visit this week to the United States, where investment opportunities in Ukraine were discussed.
Zelenskyy said the businessmen, who included Michael Bloomberg, Larry Fink and Bill Ackman, were prepared to make major investments in rebuilding Ukraine after its war with Russia.
“The American entrepreneurs and financiers confirmed their readiness to make large-scale investments in our country immediately after the end of the war and the receipt of security guarantees,” he posted on Telegram, along with photos of the meeting.
“We are working for the victory and reconstruction of Ukraine.”
On a trip to the U.S. and Canada this past week, Zelenskyy sought continued military and financial support for Kyiv’s effort to fend off Russia’s 19-month-old invasion.
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Armenian PM Says Armenians May Flee Karabakh, Blames Russia
Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Sunday the likelihood was rising that ethnic Armenians would flee the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh and blamed Russia for failing to ensure Armenian security.
If 120,000 people go down the Lachin corridor to Armenia, the small South Caucasian country could face both a humanitarian and political crisis.
“If proper conditions are not created for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to live in their homes and there are no effective protection mechanisms against ethnic cleansing, the likelihood is rising that the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will see exile from their homeland as the only way to save their lives and identity,” Pashinyan said in address to the nation.
“Responsibility for such a development of events will fall entirely on Azerbaijan, which adopted a policy of ethnic cleansing, and on the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh,” he said, according to a government transcript.
He added that the Armenian-Russian strategic partnership was “not enough to ensure the external security of Armenia.”
Last week, Azerbaijan scored a victory over ethnic Armenians who have controlled the Karabakh region since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. An adviser to the leader of the Karabakh Armenians told Reuters earlier on Sunday that the population would leave because they feel unsafe under Azerbaijani rule.
Russia had acted as guarantor for a peace deal that ended a 44-day war in Karabakh three years ago, and many Armenians blame Moscow for failing to protect the region.
Russian officials say Pashinyan is to blame for his own mishandling of the crisis, and have repeatedly said that Armenia, which borders Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan and Georgia, has few other friends in the region.
“The government will accept our brothers and sisters from Nagorno-Karabakh with full care,” Pashinyan said.
Pashinyan has warned that some unidentified forces were seeking to stoke a coup against him and has accused Russian media of engaging in an information war against him.
“Some of our partners are increasingly making efforts to expose our security vulnerabilities, putting at risk not only our external, but also internal security and stability, while violating all norms of etiquette and correctness in diplomatic and interstate relations, including obligations assumed under treaties,” Pashinyan said in his Sunday address.
“In this context, it is necessary to transform, complement and enrich the external and internal security instruments of the Republic of Armenia,” he said.
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