“Aravot” carries an editorial on the increasingly serious problem of traffic jams in Yerevan. “There are too many cars,” writes the paper. “There are families whose every four member owns a car and they are not rich families. They are representatives of the middle class struggling to repay their loans. But these people desperately buy second-hand cars … because they are unable to commute to work or take kids to school by public transport.” The increasingly poor state of Yerevan’s public transport system leaves them with no other option, explains the paper.
“A further deterioration of the situation will lead to new irreversible losses,” warns “Aravot.” “The current municipal authorities spent one year examining a new structure of municipal public transport. If this so-called examination continues in 2020 one will be able to move from point A to point B in Yerevan only by helicopter.”
“Zhamanak” dismisses suggestions that the arrest of Armen Tavadian, the two owner of an Armenian TV channel sympathetic to former President Robert Kocharian, is politically motivated. The paper extremely critical of Kocharian also scoffs at his associates’ assertions that the jailed ex-president is not widely hated by Armenians. It says that if Kocharian had really enjoyed the backing of a considerable part of the country’s population he would not have needed a statement in his support signed several dozen artists and media personalities.
Lragir.am quotes the Russian ambassador to Armenia, Sergey Kopyrkin, as saying that Russian-Armenian relations need to be “adapted to the changing world.” The pro-Western publication speculates that an ensuing Armenian Foreign Ministry statement on the 100th anniversary of a massacre of Armenians in Nakhichevan is connected to Kopyrkin’s statement. “Nakhichevan was given to Azerbaijan as a result of the 1921 Russian-Turkish treaty signed in Moscow,” it says. “They realize in Moscow that the Nakhichevan issue is becoming timely in advance of the 100th anniversary of the treaty.”
(Lilit Harutiunian)
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