“Zhamanak” reports that Armenia’s Court of Appeals has opened fresh hearings on the pre-trial arrest of former President Robert Kocharian sought by law-enforcement authorities. The paper notes that hearings coincided with the start of the parliamentary election campaign. It says Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian stated on the campaign trail on Tuesday that public funds which he said were stolen from the state by Kocharian and other former official must be given to the Armenian military.
“Zhoghovurd” quotes Russia’s ambassador to Armenia, Sergey Kopyrkin, as saying that the disputed issue of who should be the next secretary general of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) organization must be resolved by consensus. “In his words, all member states of the organization are interested in seeing the organization function and contribute to their security,” writes the paper. It also cites Pashinian as saying on Tuesday that Armenia’s relationship with Russia, including within the CSTO framework, must be “raised to a new level.” “That is to say that Armenia’s new authorities are once again sending a clear message to international partners and the Russian Federation in the first instance to the effect that there will be no change in [Armenia’s] foreign policy vector,” it says.
“Aravot” dismisses the “conspiracy theory” about Western involvement in the spring revolution in Armenia aimed at facilitating a pro-Azerbaijani resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. “The Karabakh issue is of less interest to the young people who blocked streets [in Yerevan] than to our generation,” writes the paper’s veteran editor, Aram Abrahamian. “True, during the April 2016 war [in Karabakh] their peers sacrificed their lives to defend our borders. But that does not negate the fact that the main aim of the key participants of the revolution, namely young people, was to reject the previous, corrupt and rotten, system … The Karabakh theme was not a factor. People just want to have a normal, modern and democratic state free from corruption and impunity.”
(Lilit Harutiunian)
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