by tyler | Sep 27, 2023 | CNN, europe
Nonna Poghosyan spent Monday morning walking around her family home in Nagorno-Karabakh “trying to understand what to take, what is the most important stuff I can fit into my suitcase.”
Her nine-year-old twin children had been upstairs, deciding which of their belongings they would have to leave behind. “They cry for every toy,” Poghosyan, the American University of Armenia’s program coordinator in the region’s capital Stepanakert, told CNN.
Poghosyan and her family are about to join the thousands of people fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia, days after Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive and said it had taken back full control of the breakaway region, sparking a mass exodus of the region’s 120,000 ethnic Armenians.
More than 13,500 people had arrived in Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh by Tuesday, the Armenian foreign ministry told CNN.
As many more were attempting to flee the enclave on Monday evening, a powerful explosion ripped through a gas station near Stepanakert, where people had been attempting to get fuel before driving to Armenia.
The explosion left at least 68 people dead and 290 injured, according to the Nagorno-Karabakh Human Rights Ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan. Over 100 people remain missing, Stepanyan also said.
Azerbaijan’s brief but bloody offensive last week killed more than 200 people and injured many more, before Karabakh officials agreed to a Russia-brokered ceasefire in which they agreed to dissolve their armed forces. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said Baku had restored its sovereignty over the enclave “with an iron fist.”
The Karabakh presidency told Reuters that the majority of Karabakh Armenians did not want to live in Azerbaijan and that they would leave for Armenia. Azerbaijan has said it will guarantee the rights of those living in the region, but Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and international experts have repeatedly warned of the risk of ethnic cleansing of Armenians in the enclave.
“Our people do not want to live as part of Azerbaijan. Ninety-nine point nine percent prefer to leave our historic lands,” David Babayan, an adviser to Samvel Shahramanyan, the president of the self-styled Republic of Artsakh, told Reuters.
Poghosyan told CNN she did not know of a single family who was planning to remain in Nagorno-Karabakh. “If they say 99.9, it’s false. It’s 100%,” she said.
“Aliyev can tell you a lot of tales saying ‘Look, look, a lot of Armenian families are staying.’ But I know that no one – even the poorest family – is staying.”
Azerbaijan has long been explicit about the choice that confronts Karabakh Armenians. Those who choose to remain must accept Azerbaijani citizenship. Those who do not must leave.
Anna Ohanyan, a senior scholar in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNN that there is “no question” that Azerbaijan would use force against those who attempted to stay and reject rule from Baku.
“If the Armenian community will not leave, but also will not take up Azerbaijani passports, I think that basically would be suicidal,” Ohanyan said.
More than 100 bodies have been recovered in the latest search and rescue operations following Azerbaijan’s military operations, Karabakh emergency services told Armenpress.
Among the bodies were two children and an elderly couple, officials said. CNN could not independently verify the claims.
Images shared on social media showed residents of Stepanakert, the region’s capital, packing their belongings into cars and vans, and searching for gas. The region had been blockaded by Azerbaijan-backed activists for nine months, causing chronic shortages of food, medicine and fuel.
Most of those fleeing Karabakh were women, children and the elderly, the deputy mayor of the Armenian town of Goris, Irina Yolyan, told Armenpress Monday. Goris lies close to the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, near the Lachin corridor – the only road connecting the enclave to Armenia.
The road has been partially opened, to allow people to flee to Armenia, according to Poghosyan.
Poghosyan told CNN she is planning to leave on Tuesday, along with her husband, nine-year-old twin children, parents and grandmother. The seven of them would have left sooner, but were warned that traffic on the road means many have been stuck for hours, with thousands trying to flee already.
While she and her children began sorting through their belongings, her father had joined the long line for fuel. “The government told us we can get five liters for free,” said Poghosyan. “But they say the line is so huge, the traffic, that maybe we will need more and this will not be enough.”
She said her children had been “horrified” by the shelling of Stepanakert, which began as they were walking home from school. Her husband had managed to find them on the street and take them to a bomb shelter, where her family hid overnight Tuesday.
After the initial shock, the weekend had brought clarity, she said, as her children began to understand they would have to say goodbye to their home. “I was surprised how they could… understand everything,” said Poghosyan.
“Today, they took their markers, and they went to their rooms, and they painted on their walls. They drew churches, crosses, some words, like ‘Artsakh, we love you. We will never forget you. We don’t want to lose you, our motherland.’”
The Armenian government said it was providing accommodation to all those who did not have a place to stay, according to Armenpress.
“I knew Artsakh was a conflict territory. I knew, because I’ve passed through four wars already. But who knew that the end would be so tragic? Like, this is the end, you know,” said Poghosyan.
“They changed our flag, our government surrendered. That’s all. No Armenian will be left here within maybe two weeks maximum, I think.”
As residents of Stepanakert were still attempting to claim their fuel rations before making the drive, an explosion tore through a gas station just outside of the city on Monday evening, killing at least 20 people and injuring nearly 300, according to Armenpress.
Videos on social media showed a crowded hospital in the city as medical staff attempted to treat burn patients. The blockade of the Lachin corridor meant that medical supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh have been cut off for months, along with food and fuel.
“At this moment, we do not have any medical resources left that can help us. In terms of medication, we do not have [anti-burn] antibiotics. We have a very high number of burn patients,” said a member of the medical staff at a hospital in Stepanakert, in a video shared Monday by local journalist Siranush Sargsyan.
“We urgently need to evacuate our patients to specialized burn units in Yerevan,” Armenia’s capital, she said.
Gegham Stepanyan, the Ombudsman in the region, said on X that “the medical capacities of Nagorno-Karabakh are not enough.”
David Babayan, an adviser to the president of the self-styled Republic of Artsakh, said he did not believe the blast was the result of a “terrorist act.”
“Based on the available data, the probability of a #terrorist act is practically zero,” Babayan wrote on Telegram Tuesday. He said an investigation was necessary, but this was “practically impossible” under current circumstances.
Speaking to CNN Tuesday, Poghosyan said her friend’s brother was among those killed. “Just now they messaged me that they identified him as dead, as one of the victims. They say victims are more than 200 but not identified yet. It’s really… I don’t know. As if it was not enough.”
Poghosyan said her Facebook feed had been filled with “hundreds” of posts about “missing people, families are looking for their relatives.”
Poghosyan spoke to CNN from her car in Stepanakert at around 1 p.m. local time. Her family had begun the drive to Armenia Tuesday morning, but she said “it seems impossible to leave.”
“We went out at 7am and haven’t moved 50 meters. We are in the center of Stepanakert, stuck. It’s not just a traffic jam. It seems that the movement is closed. There is no movement at all, no movement for six hours already. Just six hours already. There’s no water at home. I don’t know.”
by tyler | Sep 27, 2023 | CNN, europe
The United Nations’ human rights office has criticized the French government for banning French athletes from wearing the hijab at the Paris Olympics next year.
“No one should impose on a woman what she needs to wear, or not wear,” said Maria Hurtado, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on Tuesday.
“In general, according to the committee on elimination of discrimination against women, any state party of the convention, in this case France, has an obligation to take all the appropriate measures to modify any social or cultural patterns which are based on the idea of inferiority or superiority of either sexes,” Hurtado added.
“Having said that, the discriminatory practices against a group can have harmful consequences. That is why according to international human right standards, restrictions of expressions of religions or beliefs such as attire choices are only acceptable under really specific circumstances that address legitimate concerns for public safety, public order or public health or morals in a necessary and proportionate fashion,” she added.
Hurtado’s comments came after French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra said on Sunday French athletes will not be allowed to wear a hijab at the Paris Olympics next year, arguing in favor of “a strict regime of secularism, applied rigorously in the field of sport.”
“What does that mean? That means a ban on any type of proselytising and the absolute neutrality of the public service,” Oudéa-Castera told state broadcaster France 3.
The ministry’s press office told CNN on Tuesday that the minister “simply reiterated the law,” referring to a court’s decision in June to uphold a ban on wearing the hijab during football games. According to the ruling earlier this year, “the principle of public service neutrality applies to sports federations which are in charge of a public service.
The ministry said that “in accordance” with that ruling, “French teams are subject to the principle of public service neutrality, from the moment they are selected to this end in all national and international competitions.” “Thus, one cannot wear a headscarf (or any other accessory or outfit demonstrating a religious affiliation) when representing France in a national or international sporting competition,” it added.
She added the rules applying to other athletes will be set by each international federation, under the supervision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
“There will be heterogeneity between sports,” the French minister added.
by tyler | Sep 8, 2023 | CNN, europe
More than 800 people have been rescued over the past two days from severe floods in Greece, local officials said, after extreme rainfall turned streets into deadly rivers, tore down buildings and bridges and left whole villages submerged.
The rainstorms also hit neighboring Bulgaria and Turkey, killing at least 16 people across the three countries, including six in Greece.
The Greek region of Thessaly, the country’s agricultural hub, has been hit hardest by what government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis called “the biggest flood phenomenon that our country has ever experienced.”
The port city of Volos, the surrounding mountainous Pelion area and the cities of Karditsa and Trikala were among the worst affected areas.
The downpour has lasted days, but is expected to weaken from Thursday afternoon, according to Greece’s meteorological service. Rescue operations are now underway to try to reach those left stranded by the floodwaters, which have exceeded two meters (6.5 feet) in some parts of the country.
Videos posted by Greek news outlets and on social media have shown residents in villages near the city of Karditsa forced to swim to safety after their homes were inundated. Other villagers were seen climbing onto their roofs – the only part of their homes not submerged by water – to call for assistance.
Five villages near Karditsa have been cut off entirely by the flooding and at least six people are missing, Greek civil protection minister Vassilis Kikilias told reporters Thursday.
“The villages of Proastio, Agia Triada, as well as the villages of Palamas, Megala Kalyvia and Kalogriana, are blocked, the waters are at a great height and superhuman efforts are being made to approach and free the residents,” said Kikilias.
Kikilias said that 885 people have been rescued over the past two days, saying that the pace of the evacuation efforts was hampered by the ferocity of the downpour.
“I want to assure you that there is no means, no action and no effort that could or can be made to evacuate sooner and more safely the people who have been suffering for 48 hours that was not done,” he said.
Kikilias added that rescue teams comprising hundreds of staff are working to evacuate those stranded by the floods, with helicopters deployed to help those the boats cannot reach.
Government spokesman Marinakis told reporters that the fire service had received more than 5,000 calls for assistance. The Greek army is assisting with rescue efforts.
Police have banned civilians from driving in several parts of Thessaly, after floodwaters were seen sweeping cars from the roads.
Marinakis said the Attica region, where the country’s capital Athens is located, experienced nearly three times the average annual rainfall in the space of 12 hours.
The severe flooding comes just days after a two-week deadly wildfire tore through the north of the country, killing at least 18 people.
While its difficult to ascribe individual events to climate change without a scientific analysis, scientists are clear that the climate crisis is supercharging extreme weather.
by tyler | Sep 5, 2023 | CNN, europe
A 10-year-old boy has been rescued near Madrid after spending the night clinging to a tree to escape severe flooding as Storm Dana lashed the country with torrential rains in recent days, killing at least three people.
The boy disappeared with his mother, father, and sister when their car “fell into” the Alberche River in the town of Aldea del Fresno, in the Madrid region of Spain, on Sunday night, Spanish state broadcaster RTVE reported on Monday.
The mother and sister were found that night and transported to hospital, but the boy was missing until around 8 a.m. on Monday morning, when he was found by the guard of a private property, RTVE reported. Searches are still ongoing for the boy’s father.
The heavy rains in Spain have claimed the lives of at least three people in the province of Toledo following severe flooding in the area, Emiliano García-Page, the president of the Castilla-La Mancha region, confirmed on Monday.
On Sunday, Garcia-Page described the storm’s impact as “very hard and hostile,” with images showing overturned cars and damaged property.
The storm follows a summer of extreme weather for Spain, which has grappled with searing heatwaves and devastating wildfires. Scientists are clear that extreme weather will only get more intense and more frequent as the human-caused climate crisis accelerates.
The severe rainfall eased on Tuesday, with the country’s national weather service AEMET downgrading alerts for the region from red to yellow.
by tyler | Sep 5, 2023 | CNN, europe
Greece is being lashed with torrential rains which have flooded homes, businesses and roads and left at least one person dead after a wall collapsed in the extreme weather.
Hundreds of millimeters of rainfall have been dumped over some areas in the last 24 hours as a strong area of low pressure passes over the country, leading to dangerous flash floods.
Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has said that it is facing a “totally extreme weather phenomenon” and has urged the public to follow instructions from authorities.
The rainfall is particularly severe in central Greece and on the island of Evia and the Sporades Islands.
One man died on Tuesday after he was crushed by a wall in the village of Agios Georgios, near the city of Volos, according to the Greek fire service.
Another man was missing after he was swept away with his car on the outskirts of Volos, the fire service told CNN.
Traffic circulation has been banned by the police in Volos and surrounding areas, as well as on the island of Skiathos. Part of the local hospital in Volos has also been flooded.
The storm, which has officially been named Daniel by the national meteorological services in southeast Europe, has been moving slowly across the country toward the southwest.
Its center is emerging into the Mediterranean Sea but it will continue to bring heavy rainfall and flooding to Greece and islands in the eastern Mediterranean over the next 24 to 48 hours.
Red warnings are posted for heavy rain and thunderstorms through Wednesday for multiple provinces, especially eastern facing coastlines which will see continuous bouts of thunderstorms.
As the storm enters the Mediterranean Sea, it may take on characteristics similar to a tropical storm.
Known as “medicanes,” these systems can bring dangerous conditions to the Mediterranean Sea and coastal countries similar to tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic or typhoons in the Pacific.
Warm sea surface temperatures of 27 to 30 degrees Celsius could allow the storm to strengthen across the eastern Mediterranean over the next day or two.
The storm comes just as Greece has managed to bring under control hundreds of raging wildfires which have devastated parts of the country over the past weeks.
Scientists are clear that the kind of extreme weather Greece has faced this summer, from floods and fires to extreme heat, will only become more common and more severe as humans continue to burn planet-heating fossil fuels.
by tyler | Aug 26, 2023 | CNN, europe
The wreckage of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Embraer private jet has been cleared from the crash site, and the flight recorders have been recovered, but the metaphorical smoke has yet to clear in Moscow after the presumed death of the Wagner mercenary boss.
We still do not know what brought down Prigozhin’s Embraer Legacy 600 – expert analysis points to the possibility of an explosion – and we may never know. To use an inexact term, the biggest black box in this aviation catastrophe is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparatus of state, which is not known for its transparency.
That in turn points to a much bigger question: How will the Russian landscape change after the exit of the man who presented the most serious challenge to Putin’s rule in over two decades?
Putin has offered his own hot take, obliquely referencing Prigozhin’s contributions to the war on Ukraine.
“I knew Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early ’90s,” Putin said Thursday. “He was a man of difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life, and he achieved the results needed both for himself and when I asked him about it – for a common cause, as in these last months. He was a talented man, a talented businessman.”
But the real message Putin was sending, after waiting a full day after the crash, appeared directed toward Russia’s elite: mistakes can be fatal.
The Kremlin has vehemently denied speculation that the Russian state might have been involved in the crash.
“All this is an absolute lie,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “Now, of course, there is a lot of speculation around this catastrophe and the tragic death of the passengers of the plane, including Yevgeny Prigozhin.”
But not everyone is likely to be persuaded. Back in July, following Prigozhin’s abortive mutiny, US President Joe Biden joked at a press conference that if he were Prigozhin, “I’d be careful what I eat, keep my eye on my menu.”
Jokes aside, Biden was making a serious point. The march on Moscow by Prigozhin’s men was a direct threat to the state and a personal affront to Putin, who has long cultivated a tsar-like image of masterliness and near-infallibility.
So, who would dare stick their head over the parapet now? Any aspiring Prigozhins — and there seem to be none on the immediate horizon — are likely to be mindful of crossing real or perceived red lines.
It’s worth remembering that Prigozhin never had particularly high name recognition in Russia, at least certainly not before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the Wagner group’s successes on the battlefield raised his public profile, and Russian state television heaped praise on his Wagner fighters for capturing the shattered eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
That changed in late June after Wagner’s march on Moscow raised the unsettling possibility of civil war in Russia. Prigozhin may have cast the mercenary rebellion as a “protest,” but the uprising seriously dented his prestige. The independent pollster Levada-Center conducted a survey in July that found that Prigozhin’s public approval had plummeted after the abortive uprising.
But that doesn’t mean Prigozhin had no loyal constituencies. The Wagner group’s actions were followed closely by a coterie of nationalistic bloggers, and Prigozhin — who recruited fighters from Russian prisons and used the same salty language as convicts — appeared to have commanded the respect of many of his fighters.
So does Prigozhin’s apparent demise threaten to mobilize his followers, presenting a potential challenge to the state? At this stage, no. Wagner fighters were offered to sign contracts with the regular military after their uprising and Igor Girkin, a hardline ultranationalist who had openly criticized Putin, found himself in jail. The precedents have been set.
Fans and supporters of Prigozhin were not dissuaded from laying flowers outside Wagner headquarters in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second city and the hometown of both Putin and Prigozhin, after Wednesday’s crash. CNN’s Matthew Chance even witnessed one of the gruesome mementos at the scene: a sledgehammer, the symbol of Wagner’s brutality, nestled among the floral bouquets.
But bouquets — as well as sledgehammers — can be cleared away. It’s worth recalling a political assassination that shook Russia to her core in 2015, the murder of charismatic opposition Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down within view of the Kremlin. Nemtsov’s admirers continued for years to leave flowers at the spot on the bridge where he was killed. Local authorities always swept the flowers away, and no permanent memorial stands to the slain politician
Nemtsov’s nonviolent supporters were a very different class of people than Prigozhin’s rifle-toting foot soldiers in Ukraine and elsewhere: Nemtsov, who had been investigating Putin’s secret war in eastern Ukraine when he was killed, was the face of Russia’s embattled liberal activism.
Alexey Navalny, who succeeded Nemtsov as Russia’s most galvanizing opposition leader, is currently in a Russian prison colony, along with many others who have peacefully opposed Putin’s war on Ukraine. In a post from prison on Prigozhin’s death, which he speculated was Putin’s own doing, Navalny warned that the Kremlin leader had laid the foundation for a possible civil war in Russia.
“These are the ingredients used to create the dish called ‘civil war,’” he wrote. “They created a gang. Armed the gang. Disbanded the gang. Killed the leaders.”
No evidence has surfaced that points to the involvement of the Kremlin or Russian security services in the crash. But Prigozhin’s life and fate have laid bare the fissures within the paranoid, vengeful gerontocracy that rules Russia.
