Tag Archives: security

Russian soldiers fly to Syria to help Russian reconstruction effort

YEREVAN/FEB. 8 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian soldiers flew into Syria to help Russia’s reconstruction effort, the only military from the former Soviet Union to support Russian forces in the region.

Acknowledging the sensitivity of their mission, the Armenian ministry of defence described the 83 soldiers as “specialists” deployed as deminers and medical personnel.

“Armenian specialists will carry out humanitarian activities related to humanitarian demining, mine awareness of the population, provision of medical assistance in Aleppo, exclusively outside the zone of combat operations,” it said in a statement.

Around 100,000 ethnic Armenians lived in Aleppo before the start of the civil war in 2011. Most have now fled, many to Armenia.

Politics, though, appears to be the driving force behind Armenia’s decision to support the Russian reconstruction effort. FSU states ducked out of a Russian request for help, fearing a backlash from the US or Turkey, but Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan was keen to win support from Russian President Vladimir Putin for the revolution that propelled him to power in May 2018.

The Armenian ministry of defence confirmed that Russian transport planes had ferried the soldiers into Syria but it declined to say for how long they would remain in Syria. Russia is allied to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and helped him defeat US-supported rebels.

A Russian statement thanked Armenia for its military support.

“This, of course, will be a significant contribution to the establishment of a normal life in Syria,” said Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister.

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>This story was first published in issue 399 of the weekly Conway Bulletin, an independent newspaper for Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

Russia’s Lavrov underlines importance of Tajik military base

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FEB. 5 (The Conway Bulletin) — On a trip to Dushanbe, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia’s base in Tajikistan was a vital bulwark against the spread north of Islamic extremism and the Taliban. He also promised to strengthen Russian forces at the base. Russia has warned for the past five years that militant Islamic forces intend to move north into Central Asia.
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>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019

US imposes sanctions on Yerevan travel company for working with Iran

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YEREVAN/Jan. 24 (The Conway Bulletin) — The United States imposed sanctions on an Armenian company for the first time over its dealings with an Iranian airline that Washington said flies units of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards in and out of a civil war in Syria.

In a statement, the US Treasury Department said Yerevan-based Flight Travel was the third company to be sanctioned for working with Iran’s Mahan Air and that any assets linked to it or its executives in the US will be frozen. Last year it also sanctioned a company in Malaysia and another in Thailand.

“The designation of Flight Travel LLC demonstrates the US Government’s commitment to denying foreign support for Mahan Air and other designated Iranian airlines, and reinforces multiple warnings to the aviation community of the sanctions risk for individuals and entities maintaining commercial relationships with these airlines,” it said.

The US Treasury Department said Flight Travel provides ticketing, financial and administrative services to Mahan Air, which flies to Yerevan as well as to other cities in the region, Europe and China.
In Yerevan, Bella Gevorgyan, named as Flight Travel’s director, said that she was frustrated.

“I think it is not right to impose sanctions against Armenian citizens working with its neighbour country,” she told the Aysor.am news website.

For Armenia’s instinctively Western-orientated government, the US sanctions on Iran, imposed last year, are a headache. Surrounded on two sides by its arch-enemies Turkey and Azerbaijan, Armenia is drawn into dealing with Iran, its far larger southern neighbour.
And over the past few years, Armenia and Iran have deepened ties. Iranians, tourists and businessmen, have also become far more conspicuous in Yerevan.

In October, when John Bolton, US President Donald Trump’s security adviser, travelled to Yerevan, Baku and Tbilisi to explain the impact of sanctions, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan told him that his country would continue to deal with Iran and with Iranian companies.

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>This story was first published in issue 398 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 31 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019

Turkmenistan mobilises its military reserves (again)

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JAN. 15 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan has started registering reservists because of concerns over militants in neighbouring Afghanistan, sources at the ministry of defence told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Turkmenistan has periodically raised concerns over fighting in neighbouring provinces in Afghanistan. In 2015, President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov ordered all reservists to undertake their first mass military exercise since the 1991 break up of the Soviet Union. This was repeated in 2016, and in 2017 he signed another decree calling up for military service all men over the age of 18.

Analysts have said that Turkmen officials are concerned about worsening stability on their southern border with Afghanistan.

The RFE/RL source said that men under 50 had been told to register with the military. Turkmenistan is officially neutral.

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>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019

Russia delivers military arid to Kyrgyzstan

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JAN. 15 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbekov inspected the first batch of military equipment donated by Russia to the Kyrgyz border guard service. It had been delivered a month earlier and consisted of 125 off-road vehicles, 108 trucks, four ambulances and a handful of other vehicles. The kit is to be deployed on the Eurasian Economic Union’s borders with China, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
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>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019

Israelis sell suicide drones to Azerbaijan

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TBILISI/JAN. 11 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan has become the first foreign buyer of Israel’s so-called suicide drone, the Jerusalem Post reported. Relations between Azerbaijan and Israel have blossomed in recent years with Israel buying Azerbaijan oil and gas and Azerbaijan buying Israeli weapons. Azerbaijan is still officially at war with Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
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>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019

Armenia and Azerbaijan meet in Paris for peace talks

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JAN. 16 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers met in Paris for talks over the disputed region of Nagorno Karabakh that have been hailed by some of the most significant in recent years. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he “particularly welcomed the Ministers’ agreement on the need to take concrete measures to prepare the populations for peace.”
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>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019

Tajik soldiers killed on Afghan border

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JAN. 4 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Tajik soldier was killed on the border with Afghanistan during an operation to track down smugglers, government sources told AFP. The porous border is one of the main drug trafficking routes from Afghanistan. Shoot-outs and the kidnapping of locals, used as pawns to trade for captured Afghans, is commonplace.
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>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019

Swedish prosecutors charge three Central Asians with terrorism

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DEC. 28 (The Conway Bulletin) — Prosecutors in Sweden charged three men from Central Asia with plotting to commit terrorism and for financing the IS extremist group. Three other men are also charged with financing IS. All six men are from Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan. The three men had bought chemicals and other kit and were intent on killing dozens of people, prosecutors said. Last year a failed Uzbek asylum seeker was sent to prison in Sweden for killing five people in an attack in central Stockholm in 2017.
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>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019

Russia says Tbilisi is hosting secret US lab

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TBILISI/Oct. 4 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia accused Georgia of hosting a secret US laboratory that designs and tests biological weapons, an accusation immediately dismissed by Washington as part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Specifically, Major-General Igor Kirilov, commander of specialist units within Russia’s military trained to counter radiological, chemical and biological attacks, said that illegal experiments had been carried out at the Lugar Center in Tbilisi between 2015 and 2016, killing 73 people.

He based his assessment on documents released in September at a little-reported on press briefing in Moscow by Igor Giorgadze, a pro-Russia fringe politician who was a Georgian government minister 23 years ago.

“The near simultaneous deaths of a large number of volunteers give reason to believe that the Lugar Center was researching a highly toxic and highly lethal chemical or biological agent,” Major-General Kirilov said. “It’s highly likely that the US is building up its military biological potential under the cover of studying protective means and conducting other peaceful research, flouting international agreements.”

Georgia and the US denied the accusations. A Pentagon spokesperson dismissed them as fake news, part of the “Russian disinformation campaign against the West”.

The Lugar Centre was opened in 2013 and is owned by the Georgian government. It is named after former US Senator Richard Lugar and the US embassy said its mission is to research potential biological threats against people and also animals.

Mr Giorgadze is a fringe figure in Georgia. He was made State Security Minister in 1993 but fled to Moscow in 1995 after a failed assassination attempt against the then-president Eduard Shevardnadze. Since then he has dabbled in Georgian politics, promoting a pro-Russia viewpoint. Mr Giorgadze’s detractors, and there are many in Georgia, say he is sponsored by the Russian security services.

Georgia-Russia relations are still mending after a brief war in 2008 over the Georgian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia wants to join NATO, a policy objective that Russia sees as a threat.

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>>This story was first published in issue 388 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 17 2018