Day: October 5, 2023

There are many justified complaints about Russia’s shameful role in the loss of Artsakh and inaction in coming to the defense of Armenia’s borders. However, there is also a lot to complain about regarding the indifference of the international community, including the United States, to Azerbaijan’s aggression against Artsakh and Armenia.

For 30 years, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, composed of the United States, France and Russia, the mediators in the Artsakh conflict, issued repeated statements about the unacceptability of the use of force, urging the settlement of the dispute through peaceful negotiations.

However, contrary to such well-intentioned words, when Azerbaijan repeatedly attacked Artsakh and Armenia with frequent shootings at the border for three decades, the OSCE Minsk Group simply issued meaningless statements, urging both sides not to engage in violence. The OSCE, however, never bothered to point a finger at the guilty party – Azerbaijan – thus equating the victimizer with the victim.

Such unjust statements encouraged Azerbaijan to brazenly continue its attacks, culminating in the unleashing of a massive war against Artsakh in 2020, followed by incursions into the territory of Armenia. Last month, Azerbaijan violated the agreement it signed in 2020 to allow Russian peacekeepers to protect the remnants of Artsakh’s population until 2025. Pres. Ilham Aliyev, knowing full well that no foreign country would intervene to stop his attacks, ethnically cleansed the 120,000 inhabitants of Artsakh and drove them out of their historical homeland.

On Sept. 14, 2023, the Acting Assistant Secretary of State Yuri Kim testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “We will not tolerate any military action. We will not tolerate any attack on the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.” Days later, Azerbaijan attacked and occupied Artsakh confident that the U.S. government was bluffing.

Naturally, no one expected the United States or another major power to send troops to defend Artsakh and Armenia, but merely urging Azerbaijan not to block the Berdzor (Lachin) Corridor or refrain from the use of force is an exercise in futility. The international community did not even impose sanctions on Azerbaijan because its oil and gas was more valuable than Armenian blood.

To make matters worse, after ignoring Azerbaijan’s repeated attacks on Artsakh and Armenia since the 2020 war, Samantha Power, the administrator of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), finally arrived in Armenia last week, bringing along a letter from Pres. Joe Biden which contained a lot of sweet words for Armenians, but once again, no action.

Even more shocking, Power offered the pitiful amount of $11.5 million in humanitarian aid to the 120,000 destitute Artsakh refugees. That’s about $96 for each refugee deprived of housing, food, medicines and other basic necessities. This is a shameful amount of money compared to USAID’s annual budget of $50 billion. Her visit was too late and accomplished too little.

Several other countries and international agencies also pledged assistance to the Artsakh Armenians: France ($7.4 million), Germany ($5.3 million), the European Union ($5.3 million), Sweden ($1.3 million), Canada ($1.85 million), Denmark ($140,000), United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR (amount unspecified), Japan (amount unspecified) and Spain (amount unspecified). Armenia committed $25 million, plus $125 for rent and utilities per month for six months for each refugee. The government of Cyprus invited the Artsakh refugees to resettle in Cyprus. However, it is not a good idea to take these displaced Armenians out of Armenia.

In addition, dozens of Armenian organizations throughout the Diaspora are raising funds to help the Artsakh refugees. There are also many charitable organizations and businesses in Armenia that are helping the Artsakh Armenians with funds, supplies or services. Armenia’s Ministry of Finance opened a bank account to receive donations from the public. There is also an office set up by the Armenian government to coordinate the distribution of the offered assistance.

Just in case anyone thinks that the pledged assistance is a lot of money, it is in fact a negligible amount compared to the vast needs of the refugees for the months and years to come. Ukraine, on the other hand, has received $80 billion so far from the United States for its military, financial and humanitarian needs. In addition, 41 other countries have contributed tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine.

The lack of concrete action by the Biden administration, aside from pledging $11.5 million to the Artsakh refugees, has greatly disappointed many Armenian-Americans. It is surprising that Pres. Biden, an experienced politician and candidate for reelection next year, who has one of the lowest ratings in the history of the United States for an incumbent president, has not made more of an effort to win over Armenian-American voters. Even if Pres. Biden does not care about Armenia and Artsakh, he should have at least cared about his own self-interest, which is getting votes for his re-election.

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  Shepparton News

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday he had arrived in the Spanish city of Granada to take part in the European Political Community Summit, a forum to foster cooperation among more than 40 countries established after Russia’s invasion.

The European leaders gathering in Granada are expected to assure Zelenskiy of long-term support after U.S. President Joe Biden voiced fears that Republican infighting in Congress could hurt American policy on continuing aid to Kyiv.

“Our joint goal is to ensure the security and stability of our common European home,” Zelenskiy said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “We are working together with partners on enhancing the European security architecture, particularly regional security. Ukraine has substantial proposals in this regard.”

“We will pay special attention to the Black Sea region as well as our joint efforts to strengthen global food security and freedom of navigation,” he said.

Russia pulled out of a deal in July that had allowed Ukraine to safely ship food products out via the Black Sea, which is traditionally Kyiv’s main export corridor.

Ukraine responded by setting up a temporary “humanitarian corridor” for cargo vessels, and several ships have left Ukraine’s Black Sea ports since.

“Ukraine’s key priority, particularly as winter approaches, is to strengthen air defense. We have already laid the groundwork for new agreements with partners and look forward to their approval and implementation,” Zelenskiy added.

He gave no details but Ukraine, which is heavily reliant on its Western allies for arms, fears Russia will launch a new waves of air strikes on energy facilities this winter.

“This should be a productive day for Ukraine and Europe as a whole,” Zelenskiy added.

Ukraine’s military said Thursday it destroyed 24 drones launched by Russian forces overnight.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia sent a total of 29 drones in attacks directed at the Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kirohovrad regions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to attend a meeting of European leaders in Spain on Thursday as he seeks more support for his military, including air defense systems.

Zelenskyy said ahead of the meeting that Ukraine is doing its best to boost its air defenses ahead of the coming winter season.

“We are expecting certain decisions from our partners,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.

U.S. President Joe Biden called key Western allies on Tuesday to reassure them of continued American military support for Ukraine after a group of congressional Republicans forced the exclusion of immediate new funding for Kyiv.

The White House said Biden spoke with the leaders of Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Romania, Britain, and of the European Union and NATO, along with the foreign minister of France.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Biden reaffirmed the strong commitment of the United States to supporting Ukraine as it defends itself “for as long as it takes, as did every other leader on the call.”

Kirby said the leaders discussed efforts to continue providing Ukraine with the ammunition and the weapons systems that it needs to defend itself and to continue strengthening Ukrainian air defenses as they prepare for more attacks on critical infrastructure. “Now, certainly, but also certainly in the winter months ahead,” Kirby said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military command said that it has sent about 1.1 million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine that American naval forces seized from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps last year as Tehran tried to transfer the ammunition to Houthi fighters in Yemen in violation of a United Nations Security Council resolution.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

Fighting to win an unprecedented third term in office, Poland’s nationalist government has seized on a target close to home: Germany, its NATO ally and biggest trading partner.

In a tight race ahead of Poland’s Oct. 15 election, leaders of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party have accused Germany of trying to dictate Polish government policy from Berlin on anything from migration to gas.

The feud has frayed Europe’s broadly united front supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, shredding a plan for a joint Polish-German tank repair plant for Kyiv’s benefit.

The populist PiS leadership also says Germany is plotting to install the party’s main electoral opponent, the liberal former prime minister Donald Tusk, back in power.

PiS has tapped into a mistrust towards Germany that still runs high in part of the electorate, above all elderly conservatives who remember the devastation of World War Two.

“Do you know where you can read the (opposition’s campaign) programme? In German newspapers,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a campaign event.

His party casts Tusk, who said his grandfather was forcibly conscripted into the Nazi Wehrmacht during World War Two before escaping to the Allied side, as a German puppet and the “political husband” of former German chancellor Angela Merkel. A campaign video also mocked Merkel’s successor Olaf Scholz.

Months of spats between the two neighbours have tested the solidarity of the Western alliance that rallied around Ukraine after the Russian invasion last year. They have come at a time when other issues, including the election of a pro-Russian leader in EU member state Slovakia, are threatening disruption.

The quarrel has already impacted efforts to help Ukraine.

In April the defence ministers of Germany and Poland, with a smile and hug of solidarity, announced the creation of a joint hub in Poland to repair German-made Leopard tanks damaged in battle in Ukraine.

But the deal quickly collapsed. In another dispute, Warsaw resisted a German offer to station Patriot missile air defence units in Poland before eventually agreeing to it.

“It’s very unhelpful that Poland, the people from the Law and Justice Party, continues to criticize Germany in such a harsh public way,” U.S. General Ben Hodges, who commanded U.S. Army forces in Europe in 2014-17, told Reuters.

“It’s unhelpful because it puts strain on the relationship between two NATO allies, which therefore puts strain on the overall cohesion of NATO.”

The tank plant would have been a joint effort by German manufacturers Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall (RHMG.DE), neither of which responded to a request for comment, and the Polish defence conglomerate Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ).

Among the sticking points, one German source said Poland was asking for too much money for the repair works. Another source, a German diplomat, said the talks failed partly because German companies were reluctant to share technical information.

“But it also showed a little bit the same thing we had for the Patriots, a general mistrust on the part of the Poles and a sort of being in the habit of treating a partner in a way that is not usual for a partnership in the EU or in an alliance.”

As things stand, PGZ is repairing some Leopard tanks using spare parts supplied from Germany.

“To some extent, it depended on the speed of action and decisiveness of the German side. We were negotiating. Unfortunately, we have a slightly different view of what it should look like,” Sebastian Chwalek, PGZ’s CEO, told Reuters.

Other tanks will be repaired elsewhere, “which is maybe a little bit more costly and maybe a little bit more time consuming but it’s happening anyway,” the German diplomat said.

“It’s a sign of the present relationship that we cannot agree on such things.”

Polish government officials did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

A German Foreign Office spokesperson said Berlin and Warsaw work closely together on European security and defence but declined comment on “current domestic political debates in Poland”.

While ties between Poland and Germany have been frosty since PiS first came to power in 2015, Poles now see them worsening. Just 47% think relations are good, according to a German Polish barometer poll this year, down from 72% in 2020.

Many Poles, included 56% of respondents in the opinion poll, feel Germany has not done enough to compensate for the damage inflicted by the war. PiS has called on Germany to pay over 1 trillion euros in reparations, which Berlin rejected.

A PiS source who requested anonymity described relations as “competitive”, saying Berlin and Warsaw “could work together on many issues” but others were divisive, including reparations.

Two German lawmakers privately told Reuters that Berlin could have been more forthcoming in addressing Polish concerns and take conciliatory steps over the issue of reparations.

“I think we should be looking beyond the cartoonish (Polish policy) that this (election) campaign has put in front of us. It’s the moment for Germany to look into the mirror,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff of the German Marshall Fund.

Scholz’s government has largely brushed off the attacks from PiS. A government source said Berlin was extra cautious not to even inadvertently provoke Warsaw.

“We’re treading on egg shells,” the source said.

To be sure, some analysts believe the Polish rhetoric towards Berlin could be dialled down after the elections.

But irritants on both sides are likely to persist, including over migration, which again mushroomed into a flashpoint over a cash-for-visas scandal in Poland last month.

“Now, to be honest, what I hope will happen is that my president will invite the two leaders kind of the way he did the leaders from Japan and South Korea, invited them to Camp David,” Hodges said.

“You know, maybe at some point President (Joe) Biden meets President (Andrzej) Duda and Chancellor Scholz and says: Fellows, we have got to fix it.”

($1 = 0.9549 euros)

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