The BBC reports that it’s now official. The Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, has been re-elected with 52.8 percent of the vote. The main opposition candidate, Levan Gachechiladze, received 27 percent of the vote.

Earlier in the day, Mr Gachechiladze told thousands of supporters in the capital Tbilisi that results had been “falsified”.

In a snowbound square on Sunday, the Orthodox Christmas Eve, he told the crowd: “We will defend our vote by legal means.”

However, international observer missions applauded the conduct of the election.

US Congressman Alcee Hastings of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said: “I perceive this election as a valid expression of the choice of the Georgian people.”

He said there had been some shortcomings - notably that Mr Saakashvili’s campaign had overlapped with state activities, and this “contributed to an inequitable campaign environment”.

[…]

The United States urged the opposition to respect the monitors’ verdict.

Russia, however, called that verdict “hasty” and “superficial”.

(more…)

Railway Station, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

Sure to concern many already alarmed at the near monopolization of strategic areas of the economy by Russian companies, RFE/RL reports that the next asset to go will be the railways. However, as the news item says, the railway system has really suffered since independence and is usually a last resort not only for internal travel, but also for visiting neighboring countries.

Specifically this means Georgia as the railway obviously doesn’t run through Nakhichevan or to Azerbaijan proper as well as Turkey. Armenia is also not involved in a regional railway project involving Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan because of closed borders with the former and the unresolved conflict over Nagorno Karabakh with the latter.

The director general of Armenia’s rail network on Tuesday effectively confirmed its impending takeover by Russia’s state-run railway, a deal which will place yet another chunk of the Armenian economic infrastructure under Russian control.

The Armenian government called last year an international tender for the exclusive right to manage the struggling network for at least 30 years. Only the Russian railway and an Indian firm showed interest in the bidding, sending relevant proposals to Yerevan earlier this year.

The Indians pulled out of the tender last month, all but predetermining its outcome. Armenian media had for months claimed that the contest is a mere formality as the state-owned Armenian Railway’s handover to the Russians was decided by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Robert Kocharian in Moscow last January.

[…]

The impending deal is certain to be criticized by those government critics who believe that Russia’s growing economic presence in Armenia is turning into a stranglehold. Russian firms already dominate the Armenian energy and telecommunication sectors and are keen to acquire other industries. One of them is understood to have effectively purchased recently Armenia’s largest gold mining company from an Indian operator that fell foul of the authorities in Yerevan in January.

But according to Khrimian, more important is the fact that the new railway manager will have to invest at least $170 million in the Soviet-era network that has been operating at a fraction of its capacity ever since Armenia’s rail communication with the outside world was disrupted in 1992.

“Working in these blockade conditions, we have been unable to generate sufficient revenues to make capital investments in our train fleet and other infrastructure,” said Khrimian. “The investments will considerably improve the condition of our railway,” he added.

(more…)

It couldn’t have come at a worse time with all three republics in the South Caucasus gearing up for elections to be held next year. Georgia, considered a beacon of [relative] democracy in the region until today, has set an unfortunate precedent given that the opposition in all three countries will protest leading up to the respective votes as well as afterwards. Even the November 2003 Rose Revolution that brought the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, to power was peaceful in comparison to crackdowns by the authorities in neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Today, that all changed with the ironically entitled Steady State publishing a post simply entitled “Crazy in Georgia…” and a link to coverage from TOL Georgia. The two blogs were both established by Transitions Online and in particular, TOL Georgia is a welcome addition to blogging in the region. It’s coverage of the events as they unfold has been exemplary with recent updates now reporting attacks on the independent media in the country. Photographs recording scenes in downtown Tbilisi, some of which are posted here, are already up on Flickr courtesy of Davit Rostomashvili.

Following posts about Kavkasia TV and Imedia TV being taken off the air, TOL Georgia draws a frightening conclusion.

The Imedi TV journalists were threatened with force, kicked out from the TV station and had their mobiles phones seized.

[…]

A person was just beaten up by the additional internal affairs troops entering the TV station…

In how many democratic countries this happen???

Probably Imedi TV will be unveiled as Russian traitor TV… Shameful. This starts to look like clear-cut dictatorship…

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.

Writing for the Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor, RFE/RL’s Emil Danielyan says that Armenia’s trade with Russia has increased dramatically this year. The article follows more and more examples of Russian ownership and management of key economic assets in Armenia.

According to the most recent data posted by Armenia’s National Statistical Service (NSS) on its website, www.armstat.am, the volume of bilateral trade totaled $404 million in January-August 2007, up from $250 million registered during the same period last year. Much of the gain resulted from an almost 100% surge in Armenian exports to Russia, most of them alcoholic beverages and prepared foodstuffs. Even so, Armenian imports of Russian commodities and goods (notably natural gas) continued to account for most of the bilateral commercial exchange, rising by 50% to about $280 million.

Officials in Moscow and Yerevan have welcomed the growing commercial ties between their countries, which they say will reach a new high of $700 million in the full year 2007. Speaking after talks in Moscow on September 25, the Russian and Armenian prime ministers said they would try to ensure that Russian-Armenian trade hits $1 billion next year (Armenian Public Television, September 25). Armenian Prime Minister Serge Sarkisian instructed his ministers to closely work with their Russian counterparts to meet this target (Statement by the Armenian government, September 27). Nikolai Ryzhkov, a Russian lawmaker co-chairing a Russian-Armenian inter-parliamentary commission, came up with a more conservative estimate during a mid-October visit to Yerevan, predicting bilateral trade will likely pass $1 billion mark only in 2009 (Interfax, October 19).

(more…)

Polling Station, Arabkir, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian/Oneworld Multimedia 2007

While Mediamax reports that the United States has offered Armenia technical assistance for next year’s election which some in diplomatic circles believe will be held on 17 February, other concerns are being raised ahead of the vote. In the recent parliamentary election, U.S. technical assistance included the provision of computers to the Central Election Commission (CEC) and training for CEC, TEC and PEC members through IFES.

Anyway, here’s how Mediamax reported news of the offer extended to the prime minister, Serzh Sarkisian, on his visit to to the U.S. last week.

During a meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan on Tuesday [23 October] in Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed on behalf of the US government readiness in case of necessity to assist the Armenian authorities in the solution of technical problems while organizing the presidential elections of 2008.

However, in related news, RFE/RL reports that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) whose ODIHR office monitors elections is already raising concerns about new restrictions on the size of such missions suggested by Russia, Belarus and four Central Asian states on their activity. As Armenia is reported to support the initiative, the news must ring some alarm bells among opposition and pro-democracy activists.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008 Blog.

After a hectic few days, I’m trying to catch up with posting links to news on significant events as they pertain to Armenia. Perhaps one of the most interesting stories is news that an MP from the ruling Republican party, Tigran Arzakantsian, was last week shot, stabbed and hospitalized after a night out gambling in a Moscow casino. Last Wednesday, RFE/RL reported on the incident.

“According to eyewitnesses, a fight broke out in the casino among three of the guests” shortly after 4:00 a.m. (0000 GMT),” the Russian news agency Interfax quoted a police official as saying. “During the fight, one of the participants twice shot his opponent, who has been hospitalized…. Doctors are fighting for his life,” the official said.

“It was in the casino of the hotel,” another unnamed Russian police official told the AFP news agency. “Two unidentified attackers came up to him and stabbed him several times. He fought back, then one of them shot him in the arm. Then they ran away.”

[…]

Arzakantsian, who was reelected to the Armenian parliament on the HHK ticket last May, had already been hospitalized in the Russian capital after being beaten up at another local casino in March 2006. Reports in the Armenian press likewise linked the incident to a gambling dispute, saying that the 41-year-old businessman lost as much as $800,000 on a single night and failed to pay up. He denied those reports.

The latest incident coincided with a visit to Moscow by an Armenian government delegation headed by Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian. Arzakantsian was reportedly present Sarkisian’s meeting with Armenian university students there held on Tuesday evening. Both Sharmazanov and a government spokeswoman in Yerevan said he was not a member of Sarkisian’s delegation.

(more…)

After much speculation and earlier denials, RFE/RL reports that Armenia’s second mobile telecommunications network, VivaCell, has been sold to Russia’s main operator, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), for $430 million in a takeover bid that should raise some questions about its timing just months before the 2008 presidential election early next year. The takeover is already raising concerns about Russia’s dominance and monopoly over key strategic areas of the Armenian economy.

The deal came after weeks of negotiations reportedly involving the governments of the two countries. According to reports in the Armenian press, the authorities in Yerevan have played a large role in convincing K-Telecom’s official owner, Lebanese tycoon Pierre Fattouch, to sell his rapidly expanding VivaCell network to MTS.

The Armenian government was similarly said to have been a driving force behind last year’s sale of the ArmenTel national telecom company, which operates the country’s second cellular network, to another Russian wireless firm, Vimpelcom. The $500 million acquisition came shortly after President Robert Kocharian’s visit to Moscow.

(more…)

The BBC has a story detailing new data revealed by a human rights group on race attacks in Russia. As detailed in the local press and many blogs here, Armenians have fallen victim to such attacks although so too have other minorities from the Caucasus. Indeed, according to some sources, Russian ultra-nationalists do not differentiate between Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian and Chechen which is kind of ironic given the ethnic tensions here.

Sova says 38 people have been murdered in racist killings so far this year, and well over 300 people have been injured, mainly in stabbings.

According to its figures, the most common victims of racist killings are from the Caucasus and Central Asia.

It also warns that Russia’s skinheads have begun targeting other minorities, including homosexuals.

Sova says that Moscow, St Petersburg and Russia’s fourth city - Nizhniy Novgorod - are the leaders in racist attacks.

It says 24 people have died in Moscow alone this year as a result of racially motivated killings by what it terms “skinheads”.

The word “skinhead” in Russia implies something much more than appearance.

It is the generic term given to the country’s ultra-right activists, who continue to form organisations and carry out attacks with what anti-racism groups say is impunity.

Sova estimates there are more than 60,000 skinheads in Russia.

It says its figures suggest the toll of racist attacks is increasing, but prosecutors remain reluctant to attribute racial motivation to killings of ethnic minorities.

Instead, they often put them down to simple “hooliganism”.

Campaigners say this is because the authorities have traditionally turned a blind eye to racist killings, and used nationalism as a political weapon.

Furthermore, a substantial proportion of ordinary Russians voice opinions that would be criminally racist in many European countries.

The full article is here, and all of this is just one reason why many of us are concerned by the appearance of neo-Nazi slogans and emblems here. Yes, Armenia and some other CIS republics are simply years behind in following similar trends in Russia, but we can definitely do without this one, I think.

Doni Rostov vs Istanbul, Pan-Armenian Games, Ararat, Ararat Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia for EurasiaNet 2007

One nice feature of the Pan-Armenian Games has been the holding of events outside of the capital, Yerevan. For example, all the football matches are being played in Ararat, Artashat, Ashtarak and Abovian. Yesterday’s match between Istanbul and Doni Rostov was held in the stadium in Ararat although it was hardly well-attended.

Probably there were only about 100 people in the crowd which is kind of strange given that entry was free and there’s really not much to do in places out in the regions. Anyway, Istanbul beat Doni Rostov 3-0 and the match passed peacefully although one local man did curse the Diaspora Armenians he came across.

Armenians from Germany were speaking German to each other, he said, and the Turkish and Russian Armenians were also not speaking in Armenian. I asked him if he would speak in English to any Armenians he knew from Armenia if he lived in the United States or England.

No, he said. He’d speak in Armenian so it’s one rule for one group of people and another for everyone else, I suppose. On the other hand, the local kids who did constitute the bulk of the audience did appear to be very vocal in their support for Istanbul so that’s positive at least.

(more…)

As Russia reinvokes memories of the Cold War at the same time as it apparently invaded Georgian airspace and jettisoned a missile, the BBC reports that its broadcasts on a Russian FM station have been dropped in a move reminiscent of recent attempts in Armenia to restrict RFE/RL broadcasts here.

The broadcaster’s last FM distribution partner in Russia, Bolshoye Radio, said it had been told to remove BBC content or risk being shut down.

Two other Russian FM stations have dropped BBC programming recently.

[…]

Bolshoye Radio’s owners, financial group Finam, told the BBC that Russia’s media regulators required that all programming be produced by the station itself.

A spokesman for the company said management had made the decision without outside prompting and that it was well known that the BBC was set up to broadcast foreign propaganda.

“Any media which is government-financed is propaganda - it’s a fact, it’s not negative,” the spokesman, Igor Ermachenkov, told the BBC.

A BBC spokesman, Mike Gardner, said: “Although the BBC is funded by the UK government… a fundamental principle of its constitution and its regulatory regime is that it is editorially independent of the UK government.”

Critics say Russia is taking measures to curb media freedom ahead of parliamentary elections in December and a presidential poll in March.

Iranian truck drivers take a break for tea on the Armenian side of the border with Iran in Meghri. Approximately 10 percent of Armenia’s trade is with its southern neighbor, Iran, and signs in Meghri for everything from hotels and petrol stations to kiosks selling vodka are in both Armenian and Farsi. © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia for EurasiaNet

EurasiaNet has just published the latest article from Joshua Kucera currently somewhere en route from Istanbul to Beijing. Well, for sure he’s not in Armenia, Azerbaijan or Georgia any more as I met up with him a few times when he was here in May, but missed a farewell drink on his return from Karabakh and Meghri because I was somewhere in the air on the way to England for a short break. However, I can at least read about his visit down south on today’s EurasiaNet.

Deep in remote southern Armenia, the town of Meghri lies at the frontlines of one of the region’s most controversial geopolitical showdowns: the construction of a 140-kilometer-long gas pipeline from Iran that could reduce Armenian dependency on Russian gas while clearing the way for a greater role for the Islamic Republic in the South Caucasus.

But in this sleepy town of 4,000, that aspect of the pipeline does not register. Meghri may have been the site of a March 2007 pipeline launch ceremony between Armenian President Robert Kocharian and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but, to residents, the strategic questions that surround it account for little.

For nearly 20 years, the town has been reachable only by a long, tortuous mountain road, the highest in Armenia, passing over a 10,000-foot pass. It is frequently closed during the winter. The railroad is totally abandoned, its stock sold for scrap to Iran.

[…]

In Meghri, a nearby Russian military base that houses about 2,000 soldiers who guard the border with Iran provides the most immediate sense of Moscow’s influence. Few questions are asked about the soldiers’ mission here, however. Town Mayor Misha Hovanissian asserts that, after many years living with the Russians, ” we’re comfortable with them.”

By contrast, the United States, which has viewed the pipeline with a wary eye, has made little or no impact. The American presence consists primarily of two garbage trucks and 40 dumpsters that the US government has donated to the town, according to Hovanissian.

But Meghri residents are not keeping score. Their hope is that gas from the conduit, primarily intended to fuel a power station in northern Armenia, will be diverted so that locals can rely on gas rather than firewood or electrical heaters to keep their homes warm.

That straightforward hope, however, does not make for closer ties with the town’s Iranian neighbors to the south, on the other side of the Arax River.

What contact exists is largely commercial. Meghri residents can get special permission to go to a border market inside Iran to buy cheap goods like food and clothing to sell in Armenia. Within the town itself, there are two strip clubs where Ukrainian dancers entertain a clientele made up largely of Iranian truck drivers, many of whom are ethnic Azeris from northern Iran.

Interaction, ironically, with these truck drivers often takes place in Azeri — a language many Armenian residents still remember from the days when they could interact freely with their Azerbaijani neighbors. The Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan is mere kilometers away to the west; central Azerbaijan a bit further to the east.

Those memories often seem to make for a greater willingness than elsewhere in Armenia to patch over the past. With an open border with Azerbaijan, residents believe they would benefit from cheaper food, and shorter travel times to Yerevan. In Soviet times, the trip took about three hours on a regular highway, or was an easy stop on the Yerevan-Baku train line. Today, travel time by car can range from nine to 11 hours, depending on the season, as drivers must bypass Nakhchivan.

“Everything will get better here when the border is open,” commented Sahak Hambardsyman, the leader of a local non-governmental organization.

“We were always good friends with the Azeris,” he continued. “Many people used to live here and now they live in Baku and we’ll be glad to see them again. . . .[W]e’re from the Caucasus. We’re the same.”

Josh’s article is here and there’s more on his his continuing journey from West to East at http://www.joshuakucera.net. Sounds like a fascinating trip.