[AnNahar] Azerbaijan said Friday that one of its soldiers was maimed after Armenian forces opened fire along the ex-Soviet rivals' shared border, the latest in a series of incidents.
The two Caucasus countries clashed for six weeks last year over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan controlled for decades by separatists.
The war ended with Armenia losing swathes of territory it had controlled in Azerbaijan, sparking a political crisis in the country over what many consider a humiliating defeat.
Azerbaijan's defense ministry said in a statement that its positions in the Nakhchivan exclave on the border with Armenia and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... "came under fire from Armenian armed forces" overnight.
It said a serviceman was maimed in the shoulder and taken to hospital for treatment.
Armenia's defense ministry said it "categorically denies" the accusations.
The incident came a day after six Armenian soldiers were captured by Azerbaijan in the Kelbajar district, which was among the territories recaptured by Baku last year.
Armenia said its forces were carrying out engineering work in the border region, while Azerbaijan's military said the soldiers were part of a "reconnaissance and sabotage group."
Earlier this week, Armenia said one of its soldiers was killed after shooting broke out with Azerbaijan's forces, an incident Baku denied responsibility for.
Tensions have been running high since earlier this month, when Armenia accused Azerbaijan's military of crossing its southern border to "lay siege" to a lake shared by the two countries.
The skirmishes come in the run-up to snap parliamentary polls in Armenia on June 20, which Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced under pressure from opposition protesters.
On Thursday, Pashinyan described the situation on the border as "tense and explosive" and suggested the deployment of international observers to the border.
Some 6,000 people were killed in last year's conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which ended after Moscow brokered a ceasefire agreement and deployed peacekeepers.
Ethnic Armenian separatists in Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan around the collapse of the Soviet Union in a conflict that claimed the lives of some 30,000 people and forced many more from their homes.
Direct translation of the article
[Regnum] The visit of Alexander Lukashenko to the Russian president, which began on May 28, follows the usual route "Minsk - Sochi". As in previous visits, the official agenda includes a discussion of issues of economic cooperation.
For the third year in a row, Vladimir Putin has been discussing in Sochi the notorious "road maps" for the economic integration of Russia and Belarus in the format of the Union State. Each time Lukashenko faces insurmountable obstacles to signing these documents.
The issues of humanitarian and other aspects of union integration are still pushed into the back of the box, as if the 1999 union treaty was only about the economy. Ignoring these aspects became the cause of the Belarusian crisis in 2020 and the threat of union building. The problem persists and is purposefully chatted up. This is indicated by the appearance of such subjects as “ New Eurasia ” in Belarusian political folklore.
The Sochi talks on deepening economic integration dragged on unjustifiably, giving rise to anecdotes. Now all the conditions have been created for progress on this track. Such situations have arisen before. However, judging by the real results of the unification process, they stimulated slipping at best. The chances were not realized, after 20 years things are still there.
The Ryanair incident in Belarus complemented the triggers for unification with Russia created after the 2020 presidential campaign . Once again, favorable conditions have been created, and again there is a risk of chattering the Russian-Belarusian integration agenda, even in terms of the economic dimension.
The escalation of the conflict with the "collective West", which after May 23 every day talked about by Alexander Lukashenko, and the head of his diplomacy Vladimir Makei , and his head of government Roman Golovchenko , and other representatives of official Minsk, is the personal merit of the irreplaceable leader of the post-Soviet republic. He tries to present the story of the seizure of the founder of the influential opposition Telegram channel Nexta, Roman Protasevich, as a happy coincidence, but he does this very unconvincingly. More at the link (In Russian) Continued on Page 47
[Aftershock] Based on the results of studying the materials received on May 26, 2021, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation made a decision to declare the activities of the following foreign non-governmental organizations undesirable in the territory of the Russian Federation:
- Forum Russischsprachiger Europäer eV ("Forum of Russian-speaking Europeans", "FRE") Germany;
- Zentrum für die Liberale Moderne GmbH ("Center for Liberal Modernity", "CLS") Germany;
- Deutsch-Russischer Austausch eV ("German-Russian exchange", "NRO") Germany.
In the message of the Prosecutor General's Office it is stated that: "their activities pose a threat to the foundations of the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation." Since this provoked the outrage of German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who said that it was "strange and unacceptable", I have to resort to the rubric More technical information at the link (In Russian) Continued on Page 47
[TASS] Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) apprehended 14 members of the Ukrainian youth radical group MKU in Saratov in southern Russia, the FSB press office told TASS on Friday.
"As part of a criminal probe opened under Parts 1 and 2 of Article 282.1 of Russia’s Criminal Code (‘Establishing an Extremist Group and Participating in an Extremist Group’), the Federal Security Service in interaction with the Interior Ministry and the Investigative Committee foiled the activity of a youth radical group coordinated from the territory of Ukraine that advocates the ideology of mass killings (MKU)," the press office said.
As a result, 14 members of the group were detained, the statement says.
The FSB seized a large amount of propagandistic extremist materials from the group, as well as knives, communications devices with instructions on making improvised explosives and firearms and also correspondence with the group’s mastermind from Ukraine about plotting violent actions, the press office said.
"The members of the group are making confessionary statements," the FSB said.
Following investigative measures, a measure of restraint will be chosen for the detainees. They face prison terms of six to ten years and two to six years, respectively.
An FSB video of the raid can be seen here. It is on the Russian VKontakte page of reserve FSB Colonel Igor Girkin
[Regnum] The Holy Trinity Monastery was founded by Saint Anthony in 1520. This was the second attempt by the monk to found a monastery - the first on the Sheleksa River existed for seven years, while the local peasants, fearing for their lands, loaded the monks onto a raft and sent them down the river. Anthony found a new place on the shore of Lake Mikhailovskoye, where the monastery now stands.
The first years were difficult, the monk himself chopped down churches and cells, but more and more novices came to the monastery. In 1570, Anthony, nicknamed by that time Siysky, reposed and was buried next to the wooden Trinity Church. Half a century later, when the brethren began to build the stone cathedral, its foundation was calculated so that the saint's burial was inside the cathedral walls. Now the burial place is covered with a slab of white limestone, all pilgrims first go to the burial place.
The Antoniev Monastery became the place of exile and forcible tonsure of the founder of the Romanov dynasty, Fedor Nikitich, the monk Filaret .
According to legend, his cell was located on the site of the current Church of the Annunciation. Soon the persecutor of the Romanovs, Boris Godunov, suddenly died, and in recent years Filaret Romanov took an active part in the events of the Great Troubles.
In 1613, his son Mikhail was elected by the Zemsky Sobor to the royal throne. The tsars, and especially the Romanovs, have always favored the monastery. Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, son of Ivan the Terrible, personally copied the Life of Anthony of Siysk .
A unique contribution was made to the monastery in 1693 by the patriarchal treasurer Paisios - a magnificent 900-page gospel with over 2000 miniatures. There is no other such publication in history.
Having become the Patriarch and ruler of Russia, Filaret made the Siysk Monastery and its abbot Abbot Iona the conductor of his patriarchal will in the Russian North. Jonah performed judgment and reprisals against violators of church commandments in robes and informed the patriarch about the connivance of the local authorities to drunkards, polygamists and other sinners.
After the establishment of the Kholmogory and Vazhsk dioceses, the importance of the monastery fell, but thanks to the library, it remained the cultural center of Orthodoxy in the North. From here, Mikhailo Lomonosov left for Moscow to study , and he consulted with the monastery treasurer, his uncle.
In 1923, the monastery was closed, a commune, a rest house, a boarding house and, finally, a pioneer camp were set up here. The monastery was reopened in 1992, soon the abbot Hieromonk Trifon (Plotnikov) and novices Leonid Eisenman, Valery Dulsky and Vladimir Chugunov arrived here.
In 2002, benefactors restored the destroyed bell tower of the Three Saints of Moscow according to old drawings, in 2010 they erected the Church of Nicholas the Martyr... The monastery is friendly with the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, for several seasons they helped restorers to preserve the ancient monastic graves,
In 2018, at the request of the Arkhangelsk Metropolitanate and the Imperator Foundation for the Preservation of Historical Memory. With the help of the Russian benefactor Vladimir Krupchak, they investigated the burial site of St. Anthony of Siysk, and also conducted anthropological research of dozens of remains of monks found in different years during the excavation work and saved in the monastery basements.
For the first time, statistics were collected on diseases, food, injuries and injuries of the inhabitants of the monastery. The remains told anthropologists about a touching story of how the monk was seriously injured and for many years he was nursed by the brethren of the monastery. Photos of the sites at the link Continued on Page 47
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
