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THE ONLY Topic This Week:
The War!
●
Varuzhan Geghamyan -
in Stepanakert!
Hello, and welcome to
Armenian News Network, Groong, Week
in Review.
This episode of the podcast was fully devoted to the war in Artsakh. It was
recorded on the morning of Saturday, Oct 3 Pacific time while one of our
guests, Varuzhan Geghamyan
was in Stepanakert as the city was undergoing constant bombardment.
Unfortunately, the air assault on Stepanakert and other civilian areas of
Artsakh seems to have only intensified with more active use of cluster bombs,
long-range missiles and suicide drones. As of early Monday morning (Pacific
time) we have confirmed that Varuzhan is OK though he
communicated that the situation is dangerous as the city is still under
constant bombardment.
The use of cluster munitions, let alone targeting of civilian structures, is
prohibited by international law and it seems that the dictator in Baku, Ilham
Aliyev, is intent to level the city to the ground. As of this time, according
to the Artsakh foreign ministry, 19 civilians have been killed, 80 wounded, and
over 2700 property and civilian infrastructure has been damaged. We’re worried
about the safety of Artsakh’s peaceful civilian population and urge you to
raise awareness of this travesty among your non-Armenian friends and elected
representatives.
We
will rebuild!
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For a week now, our focus here at Groong has
been the war. What started in the early morning of Sunday 27th of September as
an all out attack on the
line of contact quickly escalated into a large scale war, with Azerbaijan
attacking civilian targets in both Artsakh and in Armenia.
On October 3rd we published a conversation we
had with Jirair Libaridian
and Tom de Waal exploring the
meta-analysis of the conflict which you may also find interesting. So check out Episode 19 for that recording.
Today we will discuss with our analysts from
Armenia, Artsakh and the US some of the developments and the outlook around the
ongoing war.
To talk about these issues, we have with us:
Varuzhan Geghamyan, who is assistant professor at Yerevan State University
and teaches on Turkey’s modern history and the history of Azerbaijan.
Asbed Kotchikian,
who is a senior lecturer of political science and international relations at
Bentley University in Massachusetts.
Marine Manucharyan
(no relation), president of the Civic Forum NGO. Her areas of focus include
Artsakh, the Armenian Armed Forces, National Security and Foreign Policy.
And
Emil Sanamyan,
a senior research fellow at USC’s Institute of Armenian Studies specializing in
politics in the Caucasus, with a special focus on Azerbaijan.
Life under fire in Stepanakert and other parts
of Artsakh. How are people handling the militarized environment, what is daily
life like for the past week?
Just days before the fighting she was planning
to be in Artsakh to visit family. Impressions from Yerevan and Armenia?
Asbed Kotchikian
A brief synopsis of the discussion with Jirair Libaridian and Tom de Waal
on this issue yesterday. What is driving Turkish activation toward the
Caucasus? Does Turkey want to be directly involved in a conflict in Armenia?
What are the factors on the Armenian and
Azerbaijani sides that will determine the duration and intensity of the
war? What are some potential scenarios
on how this war can progress?
That concludes our program
for This week’s Groong Week in Review.
We hope it has helped your understanding of some of the issues from the
previous week. We look forward to your feedback, and even your suggestions for
issues to cover in greater depth. Contact us on our website, at groong.org,
or on our Facebook Page “ANN - Groong”,
or in our Facebook Group “Groong - Armenian News
Network”.
Special thanks to Laura
Osborn for providing the music for our podcast. I’m Hovik Manucharyan, and on
behalf of everyone in this episode, I wish you a good week.
Thank you for listening and
we’ll talk to you next week.
Nagorno Karabakh, War, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Russia, Iran, Georgia, France
Additional: Cluster Bombs, humanitarian crisis