In early March 2024, Azerbaijan demanded that Armenia hand over eight villages along the two countries’ borders. To avoid a new war, Yerevan agreed to transfer four villages to Azerbaijani control; the border delimitation process is now underway. Local residents, however, oppose the decision; they want Armenia to refuse to concede any territory and have appealed to international human rights organizations for help. Photographer Egor Kirillov traveled to the border village of Kirants, which is still Armenian territory, to photograph residents’ fight against the transfer. [...]Yikes. This is similar to how the Israeli Labor party originally surrendered parts of Judea/Samaria to the PLO over 30 years ago, and look where that got Israel on October 7, 2023. Now, Armenia's government is acting in pure cowardice, with the worst part being much of the world's turning a deaf ear and blind eye to this atrocity. This will lead to a horror story sooner or later. And the aforementioned coward Rachel Avraham will doubtless sugarcoat this awful news too.
“We’re losing our homeland. Every Armenian needs to understand: our old enemy, the one who committed genocide against us, could come knocking on any door at any moment,” local resident Mariam Simonyan told Meduza. Even if the protests don’t change anything, she wants her descendants to know that she opposed the land’s transfer to Azerbaijan.
Also eyebrow-raising is this news of France accusing Azerbaijan of being involved in riots on New Caledonia:
Days of clashes between demonstrators and police in French-controlled New Caledonia are fueled by foreign interference, Paris declared on Thursday, as local officials vowed to restore order in the South Pacific territory.And no surprise Russia could be involved in this distraction either. This is similarly repellent news, and coupled with how Azerbaijan's even had jihadists coming from their territory, not to mention associated with the late Ebrahim Raisi, and Russia's made use of Iranian-manufactured weapons, it makes clear both countries are a very bad influence.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said that the violence, which has claimed the lives of three indigenous Kanak people and a police officer, had been actively supported by Azerbaijan.
“This isn’t a fantasy,” he insisted on Thursday. “I regret that some of the separatists have made a deal with Azerbaijan.” However, “even if there are attempts at interference, … France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better,” he added.
Speaking to POLITICO, a French intelligence official granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues of national security, said that “we’ve detected activities from Russia and Azerbaijan in New Caledonia for weeks, even a few months. They’re pushing the narrative of France being a colonialist state.” [...]
Relations between France and Azerbaijan have hit rock bottom in recent years as a result of French military and political support for the South Caucasus country’s neighbor and historic rival Armenia — a situation only intensified by Baku’s military seizure of the ethnic Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh last year.