More than a hundred activists briefly blocked a major Yerevan street on Tuesday as they rallied to demand punishment for police officers who used excessive force during recent street protests against an electricity price hike.
The French ambassador in Yerevan, Jean-Francois Charpentier, on Monday gave a largely positive assessment of the situation with human rights and political liberties in Armenia and praised the country’s “stabilizing” role in the region.
An Armenian pro-government lawmaker cast on Thursday the sole vote against a resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe condemning “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”
Just days after facing mass protests against an electricity price hike, Armenia’s troubled power distribution network was fined 60 million drams ($126,000) on Wednesday for what state regulators called a violation of consumer rights.
Armenia will spend a $200 million loan provided by Russia on buying, among other things, “long-range” Russian-made weapons, the Defense Ministry in Yerevan said on Tuesday.
The Russian owner of Armenia’s power distribution network has blamed Armenian state regulators for its massive financial losses, saying that electricity prices in the country should have risen faster over the past decade.
Thousands of people continued to hold a nonstop demonstration in Yerevan on Sunday night, rejecting its organizers’ calls to unblock a key street in the city center voiced after concessions made to the protesters by President Serzh Sarkisian.
President Serzh Sarkisian and Prime Minister Abrahamian discussed on Friday with a visiting Russian government member the increased cost of power supplies by Armenia’s Russian-owned electric utility, which has sparked angry street protests in Yerevan.
Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamian on Thursday defended state regulators’ decision to raise electricity prices and urged thousands of protesters to unblock a major street in Yerevan on the fourth day of their nonstop demonstrations against the controversial measure.
Russia has called for a “legal” solution to the continuing standoff over electricity prices in Armenia and warned against a destabilization of the political situation in the South Caucasus country allied to it.
More than 230 people were arrested in downtown Yerevan early on Tuesday as riot police broke up an overnight demonstration against rising electricity prices in Armenia on a street leading to President Serzh Sarkisian’s administration building.
Armenia’s 2013 decision to join a Russian-led bloc and failure to sign a far-reaching agreement with the European Union was not an abrupt foreign policy U-turn, Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian claimed on Thursday.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has handed down its first rulings on lawsuits filed by scores of Armenians and Azerbaijanis displaced during the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia could face a shortage of electricity unless it builds a new and large power plant in the coming years, energy experts from the World Bank warned in a report made public on Tuesday.
Transport and Communications Minister Gagik Beglarian dismissed on Thursday a senior Russian official’s objections to the Armenian government’s long-standing plans to build a railway connecting Armenia to neighboring Iran.
The chief U.S. mediator in the protracted Nagorno-Karabakh peace process visited Yerevan Wednesday on the first leg of a regional tour which he hopes will pave the way for renewed face-to-face negotiations between Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s presidents.
In a $250 million deal which Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamian called a significant boost to U.S.-Armenian economic ties, a U.S. energy company completed on Monday the repeatedly postponed purchase of Armenia’s largest hydroelectric complex.
Senior Armenian state officials tasked with combatting corruption have faced no investigations into millions of dollars in financial aid which they and their wives claim to have received from undisclosed sources in recent years.
Azerbaijan believes that the United States, Russia and France must no longer be the only countries spearheading international efforts to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the chairman-in-office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said on Wednesday.
The International Monetary Fund has slightly improved its outlook for the Armenian economy but still thinks that it will not grow this year, the IMF’s resident representative in Yerevan, Teresa Daban Sanchez, said on Tuesday.
Բեռնել ավելին
