COVID-19 and Trump’s indifference helped human rights abusers in 2020
Belarusian government sees $2bn of withdrawals, issues $580mn worth of bonds in 2020
Lukashenko: I am no enemy of the people
Storming parliaments: New Europe's greatest hits
One of Russia’s biggest wood product companies, Segezha could be Sistema’s next IPO
The volume of the Russian National Wealth Fund tops $183.93bn as gold overtakes dollar asset for first time
EU to begin certifying Russian Sputnik V vaccine for use in Europe
New Ukrainian VC firm QPDigital aims to invest up to $100 million in digital startups
EBRD investments reach record €11bn in pandemic-struck 2020
FPRI BMB Ukraine: Most Ukrainians are optimistic about 2021 – poll
OUTLOOK 2021 Lithuania
EBRD says loan to Estonia’s controversial Porto Franco project was never disbursed
Estonian premier quits after Tallinn development scandal
Top Centre Party official suspected of corruption in Tallinn real estate scandal
Czech Pirates and Mayors approve final coalition agreement for 2021 elections
OUTLOOK 2021 Czechia
BRICKS & MORTAR: Rosier future beckons for CEE retailers after year of change and disruption
Romanian tech entrepreneurs expand into banking sector
OUTLOOK 2021 Hungary
Hungarian government remains silent after Capitol riots
World Bank expects modest recovery for Europe and Central Asia in 2021
FDI inflows to CEE down 58% in 1H20 but rebound expected
OUTLOOK 2021 Slovakia
Slovakia to invest €1.2bn in digitisation
BALKAN BLOG: The controversial recipe for building up Albania
Heavy flooding causes chaos in parts of Southeast Europe
Vodafone Albania plans €100mn infrastructure investments after AbCom merger
OUTLOOK 2021 Albania
Kyiv accuses Bosnian President Dodik of lying about icon gifted to Russian foreign minister
Bosnia’s real GDP contracts 6.3% y/y in 3Q20
Sofia-based LAUNCHub Ventures holds first close of new fund on €44mn
ING THINK: Growth in the Balkans: from zero to hero again?
OUTLOOK 2020 Bulgaria
Labour demand down 28% y/y in Croatia in 2020
Zagreb Stock Exchange's Crobex10 index at highest level since March 5
OUTLOOK 2021 Kosovo
Arrera Automobili aims to launch Albania’s first supercar
World Bank revises projection for Moldova’s 2020 GDP decline to 7.2%
Moldova’s PM resigns to prepare the ground for early elections
Socialist lawmakers in Moldova scrap settlement on $1bn bank frauds
Montenegro’s new ruling coalition carves up top state jobs
OUTLOOK 2021 Montenegro
Vast tide of floating waste threatens Balkan hydropower plants
North Macedonia's manufacturing confidence indicator down by 8.5 pp y/y in December
OUTLOOK 2021 North Macedonia
Transparency International warns of high corruption risk in CEE defence sectors
Moldova fears flooding from Ukraine's planned Dniester hydropower plants
Romania’s industrial recovery paused in November
OUTLOOK 2021 Serbia
Slovenia’s opposition files no-confidence motion against Jansa cabinet
UK Moneyhub picks Slovenia for post-Brexit European base
Slovenia’s dire COVID-19 situation in 4Q20 caused second economic dip
Slovenia’s Eligma completes €4mn funding round
Turkish opposition leader lawsuit demands one lira from Erdogan, police probe “bald” interior minister posts
Akbank takes over Istanbul's Palladium Atasehir shopping mall
OUTLOOK 2021 Armenia
Armenia’s PM cautions conflict with Azerbaijan “still not settled” after trilateral meeting with Putin
COMMENT: Record high debt levels will slow post-coronavirus recovery, threaten some countries' financial stability, says IIF
Russia, Kazakhstan pushing for oil production increases on the back of coronavirus vaccine-fuelled oil price optimism
OUTLOOK 2021 Georgia
Georgia’s political kingpin Bidzina Ivanishvili quits politics
Modern-day “Robin Hood” inspires Georgians drowning in debt
Iran’s navy conducts missile drill while analyst argues Trump even capable of nuclear strike in final days
TEHRAN BLOG: Who’s more credible? Johnson backing Trump’s Nobel chances or Iran applauding arrest warrant for US president?
STOLYPIN: Scope for limited progress under Biden, so long as the past remains the past
Central Asia vaccination plans underwhelm, but governments look unruffled
Fears of authoritarianism as Kyrgyz populist wins landslide and backing for ‘Khanstitution’
OUTLOOK 2021 Kyrgyzstan
Mongolia's winter dzud set to be one of most extreme on record says Red Cross
Mongolian coal exports to China paralysed as Beijing demands virus testing of truck drivers
Mongolia fears economic damage as country faces up to its first local transmissions of coronavirus
Mongolia in lockdown after suffering first local coronavirus transmissions
OUTLOOK 2021 Tajikistan
China business briefing: Not happy with Kyrgyzstan
OUTLOOK 2021 Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan: How the Grinch stole New Year
Turkmenistan: The dammed united
COMMENT: Uzbekistan is being transformed, but where are the democratic reforms?
OUTLOOK 2021 Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan’s Makro positions itself for growth in a more competitive market
Download the pdf version
More...
Vardider Nahabetyan sat on a folding chair and waited to find out where her new home would be.
She was surrounded by dozens of others doing the same; the women’s headscarves and the men’s baggy sweaters marked them out as villagers. Nahabetyan and her family raised pigs, cows and horses in her home village of Jivani, on the eastern edge of Nagorno-Karabakh.
When Azerbaijani forces began their offensive at the end of September to retake control of the territory, the Nahabetyans held on for a couple of weeks. But in the end they were forced to flee.
“The Turks attacked,” she said. “They were bombing every day, it became impossible to live there.” (Her precise reference was unclear: Among many Armenians “Turks” has long been a slur for Azerbaijanis; but in this war Azerbaijan also has gotten substantial military backing from Turkey.)
Eventually she made it to this Yerevan community centre, one of tens of thousands of civilians who have been displaced in the war between Armenians and Azerbaijanis.
About 90,000 people have been displaced as a result of the war, according to government estimates. Most of those have moved to safer places away from the heaviest fighting, either within Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh. But about 40,000 have crossed the border from Karabakh into Armenia, said Tatevik Stepanyan, Armenia’s Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Affairs. That’s out of a total population of about 150,000 in the territory.
Azerbaijan’s government has reported about 40,000 civilians displaced from areas near the fighting.
In the first few days the evacuation of Armenians from Karabakh was done via local ad hoc organisation – “in a very Armenian way,” Stepanyan told Eurasianet. It’s subsequently become more systematised, based on emergency plans that the ministry had previously developed.
On the border between Karabakh and Armenia, there are aid workers registering each person, and buses waiting to ferry them to different locations across Armenia. People with family in Armenia to stay with are transported to those places, and everyone else gets bussed to the community centre in Yerevan, which ministry officials call the “triage centre.”
(People who have fled from Karabakh to Armenia are not technically, according to international law, refugees, since Karabakh residents usually have Armenian passports. They are thus formally classified as “spontaneous arrivals.”)
The triage centre has been appropriated from a local branch of the international scout movement run by the Armenian General Benevolent Union, a New York-based charity group.
The centre is staffed mostly by volunteers, including many scouts. They feed and shelter the arrivals – there are several rooms filled with rows of beds – until more comfortable accommodation can be found for them, usually within a day or two, at hotels, schools, or in private homes.
The staff also help occupy the many children who fled. One volunteer showed Eurasianet photographs of drawings that some of the children who passed through had done, including of a house with a tree in the front yard that had been destroyed in the fighting.
New arrivals get their temperatures checked and are handed face masks, too. Many of them have spent days or weeks in cramped underground shelters in Karabakh where COVID-19 runs rampant. “If they’ve been in Stepanakert or Shushi [the two largest cities], if they’ve been in basements with 20-30 people, then we’re more vigilant,” said Varuzhan Mazmanyan, a doctor who volunteers at the centre. “If they have symptoms, we send them out immediately to get tested.”
Once they are settled, they continue to receive support from local authorities across the country.
At a repurposed theatre in the southern city of Goris, the Armenian city closest to Karabakh, are stacked huge boxes of pasta, bags of potatoes, diapers, and other necessities. The warehouse is run by the local mayor’s office and staffed largely by enthusiastic teenagers, who gather the provisions to be shipped out to spots around the province where the new arrivals have settled.
The products come from different sources – the government buys some, and individuals and companies donate others. “For me, it’s a really amazing cooperation between NGOs, the government, and the business sector,” Stepanyan, the deputy minister, said.
Some of the volunteers themselves are from Karabakh, like 17-year-old Yana Mirzoyan, whose family fled Stepanakert the day after the fighting started on September 27. When the Azerbaijani bombings began, “we thought it was a storm or maybe an earthquake. I’d never heard anything like it, it was so scary,” she said.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has also worked out agreements with other ministries to ease the transition for those fleeing from Karabakh, Stepanyan said. The Ministry of Education has allowed children from Karabakh to attend any school in Armenia they like, and the Ministry of Health now allows them to visit any state clinic. Karabakh residents also can now collect their pensions in Armenia.
On the day that Eurasianet visited the triage centre it had received about 100 new arrivals, staff said. The flow of arrivals has abated for the most part, Stepanyan said: “Now, very few people are coming.”
Now, the question for those who have fled is if and when they can return. The fighting appears to have no end in sight, but Karabakhis are putting on a brave face.
Nahabetyan’s husband and two sons have remained in Karabakh, fighting. “In my heart, I know we’ll return,” she said.
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
This article originally appeared on Eurasianet here.
Joshua Kucera is the Turkey/Caucasus editor at Eurasianet, and author of The Bug Pit.
Register here to continue reading this article and 5 more for free or purchase 12 months full website access including the bne Magazine for just $250/year.
Register to read the bne monthly magazine for free:
Already registered
Password could contain only a-z0-9\+*?[^]$(){}=!<>|:-_ characters and have 8-20 symbols length.
Please complete your registration by confirming your email address.
A confirmation email has been sent to the email address you provided.
Forgotten password?
Email field can't be empty.
No user with this email address.
Access recovery request has expired, or you are using the wrong recovery token. Please, try again.
Access recover request has expired. Please, try again.
To continue viewing our content you need to complete the registration process.
Please look for an email that was sent to with the subject line "Confirmation bne IntelliNews access". This email will have instructions on how to complete registration process. Please check in your "Junk" folder in case this communication was misdirected in your email system.
If you have any questions please contact us at sales@intellinews.com
Sorry, but you have used all your free articles fro this month for bne IntelliNews. Subscribe to continue reading for only $119 per year.
Your subscription includes:
For the meantime we are also offering a free subscription to bne's digital weekly newspaper to subscribers to the online package.
Click here for more subscription options, including to the print version of our flagship monthly magazine:
More subscription options
Take a trial to our premium daily news service aimed at professional investors that covers the 30 countries of emerging Europe:
Get IntelliNews PRO
For any other enquiries about our products or corporate discounts please contact us at sales@intellinews.com
If you no longer wish to receive our emails, unsubscribe here.
Magazine annual electronic subscription
Magazine annual print subscription
Website & Archive annual subscription
Combined package: web access & magazine print annual subscription