The Eurasian military alliance has presented new guidelines for law enforcement operations to be applied in all member states to prevent ‘terrorist infiltration’. Last year 420 illegal organisations were identified, but there were also many summary actions against Tajiks after the attack on Krokus City Hall. Dushanbe is insisting that its citizens fully legalise their residence status in Russia by the end of April.
The mountain of Noah's Ark, a biblical symbol of ancient Armenia, remains an unresolved issue in the ongoing attempts to revive relations between Ankara and Yerevan. Turkey claims that Kurdish armies are organised on its slopes and does not want to grant any rights to others. And Pašinyan would like to remove the Armenian flags so as not to pursue ‘dreams of the past’.
For the first time since the ‘velvet revolution’ of 2018, the Armenian premier showed his face shaved of his beard. A gesture to wink at the need to ‘bring the country back to zero’, an expression he increasingly used to call for ‘looking at the real Armenia and not the land of dreams’.
The place of worship, dating from the 4th century AD, was found in Artaxata. The discovery is the result of joint work of archaeologists from the University of Münster and the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia. For experts, it is also a "significant" find because the kingdom was the first in history "to adopt Christianity as its official religion”.
Nagorno-Karabakh NGOs in the streets against the closure of the Minsk Group, the only institution with an international mandate for the conflict with Azebaijan. A year after the military campaign in Baku, Armenian exiles are still living in precarious conditions in Yerevan or in camps and areas near the border, hoping to return to their native homeland.
The visit to Armenia by Stéphane Séjourné, outgoing French government minister and candidate for European commissioner, was viewed with suspicion in Moscow, which seeks to keep its historical ties strong. While in Yerevan, the ‘minor partners’ of Pašinyan's coalition are collecting signatures for a referendum on the country's entry into the EU.