The Armenian print Media have seen how vulnerable our state is and how the other states may relate to us.
Newspaper may not be issued starting from December 6 since there is no paper in Armenia. Yesterday “Tigran Mets” printing house that handles most of the printing materials for newspapers informed that their paper materials may finish soon because the Ilyichevsk-Poti ship that is used to transport paper to Armenia does not work. The printing house informs that because of this fact they have to stop printing newspapers starting from December 6 and they don’t inform when they can start printing again.
After closing the border of Lars shipments come to Armenia through the following route: shipments are transported to Ukraine (Ilyichevsk) by railway, from there shipments are transported to Poti port by a ship, after which it is loaded on vehicles and transported to Armenia. This chain was interrupted in Ilyichevsk. Accoridng to our information, a decision was taken on November 24 not to let the cargo move from there (not only the paper, but the other things as well).
Concerning the mentioned issue we asked for information from the director of the Armenian railways, Ararat Khrimyan.
The latter said that the problem was arisen due to the complicated relations between the Ukrainian railway company and “Ukrser” company that is the owner of the ship.
“Our minister has talked to the transport minister of Ukraine. We are working actively to solve the problem” said A. Khrimyan. The latter informed us that their representatives was going to leave for Ilyichevsk to see the situation in the place and do something. Nevertheless, they didn’t say when the problem could be solved. Mr. Khrimyan did not agree with our note that by doing that the Ukrainians wanted to block Armenia’s source and added, “This is not targeted against Armenia and does not concern politics. This is their inner relation problems”.
As usual, we again have losses because of the inner problems of other countries.
There is an interesting fact here worth mentioning: two years ago the Armenian and Russian officials presented the opening of Novorossiysk- Poti route. According to that plan, “Caucasus” ship had to transport shipments from Russia to Poti port. It would enable us cut down the expenses on transportation anfd would be an alternative source for us, i.e. we would diversify the transportation lines. Nevertheless, due to some reasons the mentioned ship does not work and the mentioned program hasn’t come true so far. We think that our government should think about this fact and try to do something so that not to appear in blockade due to some small inner conflict between two foreign companies. Maybe this fact will help them to think more effectively, otherwise they don’t do anything as far as the problem has not gone too deep.