The Ambassador of Ukraine to Armenia has an agreement with Armenia’s Foreign Ministry to regulate all the documentation matters related to Armenians living in Donetsk and Lugansk in a distance manner, without their presence and free. Aravot.am learned about this from the head of the Armenian community in Kiev, Honorary Consul Norik Gevorgyan (the photo from sau.net.ua). “The Embassy of Ukraine to Armenia does a great job in this direction. We communicate with everybody. There is a head of the community in Donetsk, a Rev. Husik, who help us to support local ethnic Armenian residents. Basically, we are trying to remove Armenians from the war zone, but most of them do not agree and have a pro-Russian stance, many of the fight for Russia. The situation is very complicated, and as brotherly nations, Russians and Ukrainians are fighting against each other, and Armenians turned out to be fighting against Armenians, because a part of them is acting on behalf of Russia and the other part on behalf of Ukraine. The situation is very complicated and unclear”, explained our interlocutor.
After the Armenia’s voting in the UN on Crimea, the official relations between Armenia and Ukraine moved to a cool plane. We asked our interlocutor about the problems with local Armenians. In fact, the Armenian community of Ukraine is the second after the Russian community by size. More than half a million Armenians live in Ukraine. “After out voting, we organized a series of meetings under our and the initiative of the Armenian Ambassador to Ukraine to explain to the people and make them understand that the Ukrainian Armenians are citizens of Ukraine, while the Armenian Government decree is just a Government decision that has nothing to do with Armenians in Ukraine. Then, Armenia having an issue on Karabakh, it is natural that it should do its steps accordingly. Moreover, should we knew that Armenia’s vote would change something, we would get together and urge Armenia to vote differently. But they are well aware of all these things, they know that nothing is dependent on them, not to speak about Armenia’s vote,” told our interlocutor, adding that the overall tension subsided over the time. “You know, the first victim in Maidan was an Armenian origin Sergey Nigoyan. Generally, the hostilities resulted in 52 Armenian casualties, the most part of them were a hero of Ukraine.”
Now, thanks to the efforts of the Armenian community, various aids are sent to the war zone – Donetsk and Lugansk. Mainly food and blood are sent, moreover, they are not sent to a specific side. It is sent to the one who needs it. “We are all against war, but today, we have what we have and we are trying to get out of this situation rationally,” said Norik Gevorgyan.
We also wanted to learn from our interlocutor whether there are some problems with the local Azeri community. “In this sense, we are lucky,” he said jokingly, adding that Azerbaijani community in Ukraine is not big and it is a very weak community, and the Embassy’s work is not seen. “We have also an agreement with the community leaders to remain void of conflicts. A very long time ago, a couple of cases happened, we gathered and agreed to remain void of the Armenian-Azerbaijani inter-ethnic conflicts,” said our interlocutor, adding, “It is also of a great significance about how the local Ukrainians are disposed towards us. Ukrainians are very positive towards Armenians and have a very high opinion of us, we have a lot of intellectuals and they are integrated in different spheres, ranging from the ministry up to the lowest class of officials. Interestingly, the participation of Armenians in all sectors makes two percent. They are very active, patriotic and duteous citizens.”
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Nelly GRIGORYAN
