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Joshua Kucera
@joshuakucera
Journalist covering the Caucasus and beyond. Грантоед. Iowan.
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Great piece, must read:
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This time last year, Oleg, director of a remote Siberian theatre, discovered most of his team cheered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was the start of a bitter saga — one he would eventually lose.
On the moral choices of life in wartime Russia — tales from the stage for @FTMag
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Armenians refusing to use new Azerbaijani border post eurasianet.org/armenians-refu Baku has presented the border crossing as a demonstration of how Karabakh Armenians can live peacefully under Azerbaijani rule. But no one is using it.
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Armenia and Azerbaijan issue identical statements, say they "advanced mutual understanding on some articles of the draft bilateral Agreement on Peace and Establishment of Interstate Relations, meanwhile acknowledging that the positions on some key issues remain divergent."
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So the four-day talks in Washington end with "significant progress in addressing difficult issues," Blinken says. "Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed in principle to certain terms and have a better understanding of one another’s positions."
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"Soviet Azerbaijan" and "Soviet Turkmenistan" ferries in the Caspian Sea, 1984.
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Wonder what was wrong with Recep.
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Azerbaijani couple has quadruplets, names them Ilham, Mehriban, Heydar, and Erdogan. minval.az/news/124320256
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Azerbaijani couple has quadruplets, names them Ilham, Mehriban, Heydar, and Erdogan.
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Washington and Brussels: adopt "Western values." GD: sure thing!
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U.S. State Department expressed "disappointment" over Turkey's decision to close its airspace to Armenian aircraft because of a new Yerevan monument: 1lurer.am/en/2023/05/03/
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Turkey restricts airspace to Armenia over genocide memorial eurasianet.org/turkey-restric The episode appears to be a setback for the rapprochment process between the two countries that had been advancing, if unevenly.
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Pashinyan also spoke on the negotiations yesterday, said there was nothing on the table that officials haven't talked about publicly and expressed hope that the talks could result in a final agreement within a month: armenpress.am/eng/news/11101
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Aliyev also claimed that Azerbaijan "becoming a military ally to Türkiye, indirectly becomes also, to a certain degree, a military ally to NATO." At the same time he criticized other regional countries that try too hard to jump through hoops get into the EU and NATO:
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Aliyev also, interestingly given the high level attention that the talks are getting in Washington, says that the talks should be without mediation, directly with Armenia.
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A senior Armenian envoy responded, seems like the dispute is over something Azerbaijan wants to include aimed at preventing "separatism," Armenia is opposed:
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Today, the Azerbaijani president complained that Armenia deleted the wording "condemnation of separatism" in the document proposed by Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, he didn’t say that the word “separatism” is not an international legal term and does not have an established international… Show more
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Ilham Aliyev spoke yesterday and gave a bit of insight into the ongoing Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiations. president.az/en/articles/vi He expressed pessimism and said Armenia continued to try to make some Karabakh-related demands in the Baku-Yerevan agreement:
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Asked who is Armenia's most important security partner, more name Iran than any other country. Iran, which has only made vague statements threatening Azerbaijan, is now seen as more reliable as Russia, with several thousand troops in Armenia and Karabakh and a treaty guarantee.
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But relations with Turkey way up, 23 percent of Armenians evaluate ties as "good," far more than any time in the recent past.
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Some dramatic shifts in public opinion going on in Armenia, according to the new IRI poll: iri.org/resources/publ
Relations with Russia are as bad as ever:
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Turkey restricts airspace to Armenia over genocide memorial eurasianet.org/turkey-restric The episode appears to be a setback for the rapprochment process between the two countries that had been advancing, if unevenly.
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Turkey shuts its airspace flights to and from Armenia after the latter erected a monument commemorating assassinations against the Ottoman officials in 1920s: Cavusoglu
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Armenian ruling party MP says that after the meetings in Washington the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan are going to meet in Moscow: panorama.am/ru/news/2023/0
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Lots of interesting reporting here, and while there are some inevitable errors, a far more serious interpretation of what is going on in Georgia today than any of the other dispatches in the recent spate of international attention we've gotten:
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An aside, these consequential negotiations are being conducted not by seasoned diplomats, but by a Pashinyan loyalist and a nonentity who was appointed when AZ decided to move real diplomacy out of the foreign ministry and into the presidential apparatus:
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These talks are now reported to be planned for several days, seems like the most significant diplomatic push since 2020 to come to some kind of agreement, whether a "road map" or something more substantial.
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Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and his Armenian counterpart, Ararat Mirzoyan, are meeting today for talks mediated by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington D.C.
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Iconic century old linden tree of the Lykhnashta field in Abkhazia started blossoming despite recent attempt by some religious fanatics to cut it down.
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Azerbaijani media report that yesterday 11 people used the new Azerbaijani border crossing between Armenia and Karabakh, 3 going from Armenia to Karabakh and 8 the other way:
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Among diasporas, political infighting is nothing new. For Iranian Americans, accusations of collaboration are widespread. But the attacks go past occasional smears — many Iranian expats, particularly women, have been harassed and threatened by their peers.
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It says that Russian peacekeepers told the Karabakh Armenians there would be no Azerbaijani checks, but when the got to the border, they were forced to pass through the checkpoint. Raises more questions than answers, as they say.
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The de facto Karabakh government issued a statement on the video of Armenians using the Azerbaijani checkpoint, implicitly blames Russian peacekeepers:
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Armenia may be dabbling in moving westward geopolitically, but its economy is becoming more tightly tied to Russia. Good report from :
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Also worth noting that Azerbaijan STILL has all of its land border closed because of Covid, but is managing to make an exception for Armenia.
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All land borders of Azerbaijan is closed, except the one with Armenia. What a time we live in! twitter.com/Caucasuswar/st…
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1/ Washington DC is hosting talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This is the first round since similar meeting here last November. Since then they exchanged drafts, but no face-to-face meetings have taken place due to the blockage of the Lachin road in #NagornoKarabakh.
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Meanwhile Blinken is going to meet with the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Washington: state.gov/public-schedul According to the schedule seems like they could talk all day.
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The de facto Karabakh human rights ombudsman, though, says the video is a "cheap show" and will provide evidence soon.
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How will I comment the video shared by the Azerbaijani propaganda machine?
Using people's suffering for a cheap show, nothing else.
I will present details after interviews with the citizens of Artsakh seen in the video.
Using people's suffering for a cheap show, nothing else.
I will present details after interviews with the citizens of Artsakh seen in the video.2
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Azerbaijan state TV releases footage of its border control post in operation, with a handful Armenians using it. Impossible to know what is going on without more context, but Baku is trying to present a face of normalcy.
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One of the most significant developments in today's diplomatic talks, however, is Armenian FM Mirzoyan's statement that Yerevan will not involve itself in negotiations over Azerbaijan's establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor.
Full comments here:
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Happening now: France’s foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, is holding a press conference in Yerevan with her Armenian counterpart, Ararat Mirzoyan, following diplomatic talks and a visit to the tense border with Azerbaijan following fatal clashes.
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After "The End of History" turned out to be so prescient, Fukuyama hasn't lost a step with his latest piece, "Russia is Winning in Georgia." (foreignaffairs.com/georgia/russia) Now his new book has been translated into Georgian, just what the political/intellectual discourse here needs.
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We were thrilled to host Night Owl Session: Liberalism and Its Discontents at Stamba Amphitheatre yesterday.
@FukuyamaFrancis was in conversation with @kath_stoner with a lot of questions (as expected) from the audience.
In partnership with @StanfordCDDRL
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... and then the story was deleted and it hasn't appeared anywhere else. I wonder how the negotiations with the Russian peacekeepers over this are going...
apa.az/en/domestic-po
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