Research project reveals the original pigments of 2,000-year-old inscriptions at the temple of Esna

by University of Tübingen

The temple of Esna, seen from the east (spring 2019). Credit: Ahmed Amin

More than 200 years after the rediscovery of an Egyptian temple, a German-Egyptian research team has uncovered the original colors of inscriptions that are around 2,000 years old. Freed from thick layers of soot and dirt, the reliefs and inscriptions can now be admired again in bright colors. The project, led by Egyptologist Professor Christian Leitz, also discovered new inscriptions that reveal the ancient Egyptian names of constellations for the first time. The restoration work is a cooperation between the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.


The temple is in Esna, 60 kilometers south of Luxor in Egypt. Only the vestibule (called the pronaos) remains, but it is complete. At 37 meters long, 20 meters wide and 15 meters high, the sandstone structure was placed in front of the actual temple building under the Roman Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD) and probably eclipsed it. The roof is supported by 24 columns, the capitals of the 18 free-standing columns are decorated with different plant motifs. "In Egyptian temple architecture this is an absolute exception," says Tübingen Egyptologist Daniel von Recklinghausen.

The work on the elaborate decorations probably took up to 200 years. The temple of Esna is famous for its astronomical ceiling and especially for the hieroglyphic inscriptions. They are considered to be the most recent coherent hieroglyphic text corpus that has been preserved today and which de-scribes the religious ideas of the time and the cult events at the site.

Its location in the middle of the city center probably contributed to the fact that the vestibule was preserved and was not used as a quarry for building materials as other ancient edifices were during the industrialization of Egypt. Indeed, the temple had become part of the modern city. Houses and shacks were built directly against some of its walls, in other places it protruded from a mountain of rubble, as can be seen on postcards from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the first half of the 19th century, the hall served temporarily as a warehouse for cotton.

A restored column capital (spring 2019) shows the decoration in color. Credit: Ahmed Amin

Detail of a frieze (autumn 2019). The cartouche contains the name of Hadrian, framed by the local god Khnum (left) and the solar god Behedeti (right). Credit: Ahmed Amin

A column abacus before restoration. Credit: Ahmed Amin

A column abacus after restoration. Credit: Ahmed Amin

The restoration work shows that under many layers the original colors are preserved.

 Credit: Ahmed Emam

Egyptian constellations on the ceiling of the temple of Esna, inscriptions as yet unknown. Far right the east wind in the form of a scarab beetle with a ram’s head. Credit: Ahmed Amin

Representation of a constellation in form of a mummy. Credit: Ahmed Amin

As early as in Napoleon's time, the pronaos attracted attention in expert circles, as it was considered an ideal example of ancient Egyptian temple architecture. The real wealth, the inscriptions, was recognized by the French Egyptologist Serge Sauneron (1927-1976), who pushed ahead with the excavation of the temple and published the inscriptions in full. But without the original colors—Sauneron could not recognize them under the layers of soot and bird excrement.

Now the layers have been removed and the temple looks in part as it may have done some 2,000 years ago. In addition, it now offers new approaches for Egyptology research, says Christian Leitz, "The hieroglyphics that Sauneron explored were often only very roughly chiseled out, the details only applied by painting them in color. This means that only preliminary versions of the inscriptions had been researched. Only now do we get a picture of the final version." In the area of the astronomical ceiling, many inscriptions were not executed in relief, but only painted in ink. "They were previously undetected under the soot and are now being exposed piece by piece. Here we have found, for example, the names of ancient Egyptian constellations, which were previously completely unknown," says Leitz.


Since 2018, the two Tübingen researchers have been working with Egyptian authorities to uncover, preserve and document the paint layers. Even during the coronavirus pandemic, the work is being continued by an Egyptian team of 15 restorers and a chief conservator from the Egyptian Ministry. At regular intervals, the results are documented photographically in documentation campaigns. At the University of Tübingen, the finds are evaluated in terms of content and made available to the public via publications. Cooperation partners on the Egyptian side are Dr. Hisham El-Leithy, Mohamed Saad, Ahmed Amin, Mustafa Ahmed, Ahmed Emam. The project is supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Ancient Egypt Foundation and the Santander Bank.


Explore further Blocks found in Egypt bear name of famed pharaoh's builder

More information: For more information, see www.esna-projekt-tuebingen.de
Provided by University of Tübingen

30,000-year-old twin remains found in ancient grave in Austria

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Burial 1 with the skeletal remains of two infants recovered as block in 2005 (ind1 on the left, ind2 on the right). Photograph: Natural History Museum Vienna; modified. Credit: Communications Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-01372-8

A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in Austria, the U.S. and Portugal has identified the remains of two infants found in an ancient grave in Austria as identical twin babies. In their paper published in the journal Communications Biology, the group describes their study of the remains and the surrounding artifacts and what they learned about the burial.


Back in 2005, archeologists discovered the remains of three very young people buried in a grave at the Krems-Wachtberg, dig site in Austria—all three had been dated to approximately 30,000 years ago. Work at the site has revealed the presence of an ancient settlement called Gravettian. In this new effort, the researchers have studied the remains of the three infants and analyzed other artifacts found in the gravesite with them.

Two of the infants were buried under approximately five meters of soil. They were close to one another beneath a mammoth shoulder bone that had been cut and shaved to serve as a coffin lid. The lid had protected the remains, leaving them in very good condition. A DNA analysis showed that the two infants (both boys) were newly born identical twin babies. The first had died shortly after birth, while the second died approximately 50 days later. The time between deaths indicated that the gravesite had been reopened for use when the second baby died. The third infant, buried a small distance away and without a cover, was in poor condition, but the researchers were able to retrieve DNA material that showed it to be a cousin of the other two infants. The cause of the infants' deaths is unknown.

The grave itself was oval-shaped and the babies had been placed as if spooning—they had been laid on a bed of red ochre. The researchers also found 53 beads made of mammoth ivory lined up inside the grave, suggesting that they had been strung together. Because the beads showed no signs of wear, the researchers assumed they had been strung for the burial. The researchers also found three perforated mollusk shells in the grave and one fox incisor. The remains of the twins represent the oldest known monozygotic twins ever found.

a The twin’s bodies (individual 1 and 2) in the grave pit of Burial 1. b, c Mammoth ivory beads and their arrangement on individual 1’s pelvis. d Adornment of Individual 2 consisting of a perforated fox incisor (Vulpes sp.) and three perforated molluscs (Theodoxus sp.). e Ivory pin from Burial 2 (individual 3) (find numbers: c Ivory bead WA-18158; d molluscs (from top to bottom) WA-151565, WA-151561, WA-151564, fox incisor WA-151558; e ivory pin WA-37552). Photographs: OREA, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Graph: R. Thomas. Credit: Communications Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-01372-8


Explore further Remains dug from Japan mass grave suggest epidemic in 1800s
More information: Maria Teschler-Nicola et al. Ancient DNA reveals monozygotic newborn twins from the Upper Palaeolithic, Communications Biology (2020).

DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-01372-8
Journal information: Communications Biology



© 2020 Science X Network

Possible thousand-kilometer-long river running deep below Greenland's ice sheet

by Hokkaido University

The suggested valley and possible river flowing from the deep interior of Greenland to Petermann Fjord deep below Greenland's ice sheet (500 meters below sea level). (Christopher Chambers et al, The Cryosphere, November 12, 2020). Credit: Christopher Chambers et al, The Cryosphere, November 12, 2020.

Computational models suggest that melting water originating in the deep interior of Greenland could flow the entire length of a subglacial valley and exit at Petermann Fjord, along the northern coast of the island. Updating ice sheet models with this open valley could provide additional insight for future climate change predictions.


Radar surveys have previously mapped Greenland's bedrock buried beneath two to three thousand meters of ice. Mathematical models were used to fill in the gaps in survey data and infer bedrock depths. The surveys revealed the long valley, but suggested it was segmented, preventing water from flowing freely through it. However, the peaks breaking the valley into segments only show up in areas where the mathematical modeling was used to fill in missing data, so could not be real.

Christopher Chambers and Ralf Greve, scientists at Hokkaido University's Institute of Low Temperature Science, wanted to explore what might happen if the valley is open and melting increases at an area deep in Greenland's interior known for melting. Collaborating with researchers at the University of Oslo, they ran numerous simulations to compare water dynamics in northern Greenland with and without valley segmentation.

The results, recently published in Cryosphere, show a dramatic change in how water melting at the base of the ice sheet would flow, if the valley is indeed open. A distinct subglacial watercourse runs all the way from the melting site to Petermann Fjord, which is located more than 1,000 kilometers away on the northern coast of Greenland. The watercourse only appears when valley segmentation is removed; there are no other major changes to the landscape or water dynamics.

"The results are consistent with a long subglacial river," Chambers says, "but considerable uncertainty remains. For example, we don't know how much water, if any, is available to flow along the valley, and if it does indeed exit at Petermann Fjord or is refrozen, or escapes the valley, along the way."

If water is flowing, the model suggests it could traverse the whole length of the valley because the valley is relatively flat, similar to a riverbed. This suggests no parts of the ice sheet form a physical blockade. The simulations also suggested that there was more water flow towards the fjord with a level valley base set at 500 meters below sea level than when set at 100 meters below. In addition, when melting is increased only in the deep interior at a known region of basal melting, the simulated discharge is increased down the entire length of the valley only when the valley is unblocked. This suggests that a quite finely tuned relationship between the valley form and overlying ice can allow a very long down-valley water pathway to develop.

"Additional radar surveys are needed to confirm the simulations are accurate," says Greve, who has been developing the model used in the study, called Simulation Code for Polythermal Ice Sheets (SICOPOLIS). "This could introduce a fundamentally different hydrological system for the Greenland ice sheet. The correct simulation of such a long subglacial hydrological system could be important for accurate future ice sheet simulations under a changing climate."


Explore further Researchers discover more than 50 lakes beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet
More information: Christopher Chambers et al. Possible impacts of a 1000 km long hypothetical subglacial river valley towards Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland, The Cryosphere (2020). DOI: 10.5194/tc-14-3747-2020
Provided by Hokkaido University

Study reveals how to improve natural gas production in shale

by Los Alamos National Laboratory

A Los Alamos study reveals how production pressures can be optimized to efficiently recover natural gas. Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory

A new hydrocarbon study contradicts conventional wisdom about how methane is trapped in rock, revealing a new strategy to more easily access the valuable energy resource.

"The most challenging issue facing the shale energy industry is the very low hydrocarbon recovery rates: less than 10 percent for oil and 20 percent for gas. Our study yielded new insights into the fundamental mechanisms governing hydrocarbon transport within shale nanopores," said Hongwu Xu, an author from Los Alamos National Laboratory's Earth and Environmental Sciences Division. "The results will ultimately help develop better pressure management strategies for enhancing unconventional hydrocarbon recovery."

Most of U.S. natural gas is hidden deep within shale reservoirs. Low shale porosity and permeability make recovering natural gas in tight reservoirs challenging, especially in the late stage of well life. The pores are miniscule—typically less than five nanometers—and poorly understood. Understanding the hydrocarbon retention mechanisms deep underground is critical to increase methane recovering efficiency. Pressure management is a cheap and effective tool available to control production efficiency that can be readily adjusted during well operation—but the study's multi-institution research team discovered a trade-off.

This team, including the lead author, Chelsea Neil, also of Los Alamos, integrated molecular dynamics simulations with novel in situ high-pressure small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) to examine methane behavior in Marcellus shale in the Appalachian basin, the nation's largest natural gas field, to better understand gas transport and recovery as pressure is modified to extract the gas. The investigation focused on interactions between methane and the organic content (kerogen) in rock that stores a majority of hydrocarbons.

The study's findings indicate that while high pressures are beneficial for methane recovery from larger pores, dense gas is trapped in smaller, common shale nanopores due to kerogen deformation. For the first time, they present experimental evidence that this deformation exists and proposed a methane-releasing pressure range that significantly impacts methane recovery. These insights help optimize strategies to boost natural gas production as well as better understand fluid mechanics.

Methane behavior was compared during two pressure cycles with peak pressures of 3000 psi and 6000 psi, as it was previously believed that increasing pressure from injected fluids into fractures would increase gas recovery. The team discovered that unexpected methane behavior occurrs in very small but prevalent nanopores in the kerogen: the pore uptake of methane was elastic up to the lower peak pressure, but became plastic and irreversible at 6,000 psi, trapping dense methane clusters that developed in the sub-2 nanometer pore, which encompass 90 percent of the measured shale porosity.

Led by Los Alamos, the multi-institution study was published in Nature's new Communications Earth & Environment journal this week. Partners include the New Mexico Consortium, University of Maryland, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research.


Explore further

Unintended methane release from UK shale gas site equivalent to 142 trans-Atlantic flights

More information: Chelsea W. Neil et al, Reduced methane recovery at high pressure due to methane trapping in shale nanopores, Communications Earth & Environment (2020).

DOI: 10.1038/s43247-020-00047-w

Provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory

Azerbaijan Celebrates 'Victory,' Armenia In Crisis After Nagorno-Karabakh Deal
November 10, 2020  By Ron Synovitz

People wave the national flag and hold portraits of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his father and predecessor Heydar as they celebrate in the streets of Baku on November 10.

Still euphoric over the capture of a vital city from Armenian forces, Azerbaijanis celebrated on the streets of Baku after a Russian-brokered deal was signed late on November 9 aimed at ending the war over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Meanwhile Yerevan, the Armenian capital, was plunged into a political crisis over the truce.

Angry crowds stormed the Armenian parliament and ransacked government buildings after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced the deal on his Facebook page.

As demonstrators also broke into Pashinian's official residence, there was speculation the Armenian leader would be toppled and that the truce, along with the huge battlefield losses in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, could bring pro-Moscow Armenian nationalists back into power.

Cutting Its Losses?

Pashinian called the decision to sign the truce "inexpressibly painful."

He said he did so after "an in-depth analysis of the military situation" a day after Azerbaijani forces seized the nearby fortress city of Shushi, known as Susa in Azeri.

That ancient town is positioned on a mountaintop that overlooks Nagorno-Karabakh's main city of Stepanakert -- giving Azerbaijani artillery and rocket launchers an undeniable advantage in the battle for the regional capital and another likely conquest in a war Azerbaijan has been winning.

"This is not a victory, but there will be no defeat until you admit you are defeated," Pashinian said. "We will never admit that we are defeated and this should be the beginning of our period of national unity and revival."

The truce deal calls for Armenian forces to vacate the territory they still control within seven Azerbaijani regions around Nagorno-Karabakh that they have occupied since a war between the two countries was frozen by a shaky cease-fire in 1994.

Azerbaijan's forces will keep control over all the occupied territory they have recaptured since the war reignited on September 27, including Susa.



Baku has agreed to allow the deployment of Russian forces as peacekeepers. The Russian positions will include the route of a new road to be built through Azerbaijan's Lachin district.

That route, known as "the new Lachin corridor," is to pass through a 5-kilometer-wide strip of southwestern Azerbaijan, bypassing Susa, in order to establish a direct road link between Armenia and Stepanakert.

The Russian deployments with troops and tanks were already under way on November 10.

Meanwhile, Pashinian also agreed to allow a new transit corridor through southern Armenia that will give Baku a connection to its landlocked, southwestern exclave of Naxcivan.

Russian peacekeepers will also be deployed in that transit corridor.

Turkish Role?

The deal makes a vague reference to a Turkish presence at a "joint cease-fire monitoring center" -- causing confusion over the role Turkish forces may play in future peacekeeping operations.

Fuad Shahbazov, a research analyst at the Baku-based Center for Strategic Communications, told RFE/RL that the Turkish reference was necessary for Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to agree to allow Russian peacekeepers on Azerbaijani soil. "Azerbaijan agreed to Russian peacekeepers only on the condition that Turkish soldiers also will be on the ground," he said. "We're still wondering about the details -- what Turkish forces will be doing and where exactly they’ll be stationed."

"I don't know if there will be a large number of Turkish troops," Shahbazov continued. "Russia will be clearly unhappy if there is a large number of Turkish forces."

"But public opinion about Russia is really bad in Azerbaijan," he said. "There's a confidence problem between Azerbaijan and Russia. So Turkish forces, for Azerbaijanis, are seen as a real guarantor of stability."

Shahbazov added that he would not be surprised if Baku insisted that it has agreed to Russian peacekeepers "only on the condition that Turkish soldiers also are represented here."

But Aliyev and Azerbaijanis may be quickly disappointed on that issue.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on November 10 there had been no agreement on deploying any Turkish peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh. He said the Turkish military would help staff the joint monitoring center.

Risk For Aliyev?

Azerbaijan's opposition parties had varying views of the cease-fire agreement.

Arif Hacili, the head of the Musavat Party, bemoaned the fact that no consultations were held with political parties, members of parliament, or Azerbaijani citizens.

Hacili said people only learned about the agreement at 4 a.m. in the morning. He called the timing of the announcement "unacceptable" and said the truce violated the constitution because foreign troops are being deployed in Azerbaijan without parliament's approval.

Political analyst Rauf Mirkadirov called November 10 "a black day" in Azerbaijan's history. He said history will not view Aliyev as the country's "savior" because he is allowing Russian troops to establish a presence in the country -- something Baku has avoided since Azerbaijan achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and Russian troops left the following year.

Seymur Hazi, deputy chairman of the opposition Azerbaijani Popular Front Party, said he supported the army and considered the war to have been won. "But the party is concerned about the return of the Russian Army to the region after a long period," he said, adding that he believes Russian deployments pose a threat to Azerbaijan's independence.

SEE ALSO:
Russian Peacekeepers Deploy To Nagorno-Karabakh After Truce As Political Crisis Hits Armenia

Matthew Bryza, a former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan who co-chaired negotiations over the conflict as Washington's envoy in the OSCE's Minsk Group, agreed that Russian peacekeepers on Azerbaijani territory were "a negative" for Baku. "But overall, this is a huge victory for Aliyev," he told RFE/RL. "Azerbaijan regains control of all of its seven [occupied] territories and [parts of] Nagorno-Karabakh with no change in the status of Karabakh. It's the biggest diplomatic victory in the history of an independent Azerbaijan."

Ending the war without an assault on Stepanakert is a smart move for Baku, Bryza said. "There are a lot of people with war fever in Azerbaijan" who wanted its forces to take back all of Nagorno-Karabakh from the ethnic Armenian separatists, he said.

"That would be unwise," Bryza said. "You don't gain anything. All you do is risk killing a lot of civilians."

"Azerbaijan already won the war when it recaptured Susa over the weekend," he continued. "It controls access to Stepanakert. There is nothing more to be gained on the ground militarily, but everything to be lost politically," arguing that Azerbaijan would be seen as "an international pariah" if it continued to advance on Stepanakert after the Armenian forces were largely defeated.

Crisis In Yerevan

Regarding the political situation in Yerevan, Bryza said the Kremlin would be happy if Pashinian was forced from power as a result of the conflict. "Armenia lost the war and this is a huge strategic defeat for them," he said. "It's probably the worst thing that's happened to Armenia since the Bolsheviks took over and, maybe, since 1915."

Pashinian "had a chance to have a much better deal," but rejected previously agreed "basic principles" contained in three previous cease-fire agreements, Bryza said.

Richard Giragosian, the head of the Center for Regional Studies in Yerevan, told RFE/RL that Pashinian "had no choice."

"To be honest...after losing Susa we had to accept the reality -- if we do not accept this agreement dictated by Russia, we may lose the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh," he said. "We had no alternative. By signing this agreement we saved the people [living and fighting] there, the rest of [the territory of] Nagorno-Karabakh, and stopped the war. These were important achievements."


"For better or for worse, I think this is Pashinian's swan song," Bryza said. "He had a popular support base but it was not organized. It was not consolidated into a political force that could counter the extreme nationalists and the entrenched business interests" dominating Armenian politics.

"Russia knew that if and when Armenia lost this war, Pashinian would be teetering, ready to fall off the cliff, and his political career would effectively be over," he added.

Arkady Dubnov, a political scientist at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told Current Time on November 10 that there was one bright spot for ethnic Armenians in Stepanakert.

With the exception of Susa, Dubnov said, the Armenians had managed to "preserve the core of Nagorno-Karabakh" in the form it had been when its de facto leaders in Stepanakert declared independence nearly three decades ago.
With reporting from Yerevan and Baku by RFE/RL's Armenian and Azerbaijani services

As Guns Fall Silent In Nagorno-Karabakh, There's One Winner In The Conflict You Might Not Expect

November 10, 2020 By Mike Eckel

An Azerbaijani soldier with a national flag rides a horse in Ganca, 

Azerbaijan's second-largest city, near the border with Armenia, on November 10.

Who’s the big winner in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace deal?

Russia.

As smoke clears from the battlefields around Nagorno-Karabakh and the ink is drying on the three-page peace deal aimed at halting the worst fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan in decades, one thing seems increasingly clear:

The Kremlin has won.

At the very least, Moscow has snatched what looks like a victory from the jaws of defeat. It’s further increased its clout in a region where a flare-up of fighting between two former Soviet republics and a more robust Turkish role threatened to shrink the Kremlin's influence.

“Russia did well in this,” said Matthew Bryza, a former co-chair of the Minsk Group, a long-standing diplomatic effort to resolve the conflict. “Putin has dominated. He’s the kingmaker in the situation.”

Yes, the Minsk Group is dead. Seems so."
-- Matthew Bryza, former Minsk Group co-chair

At least 2,000 soldiers and civilians, likely more, have died since September 27, when the latest round of fighting erupted over Nagorno-Karabakh, a small, mountainous territory that is legally part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenians for 26 years.

In the years since the 1994 cease-fire that ended all-out war, Azerbaijani and Armenian forces have regularly skirmished, exchanging sniper fire and mortar rounds, but stopped short of another full-on conflict.

The region’s unresolved status put it in a category known to experts as a “frozen conflict”-- hot spots around the former Soviet Union where Russia plays a central role, both perpetuating and mitigating the tensions.

Others, with varying levels of tension and violence, include Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions and Moldova’s breakaway Transdniester region. And then there’s eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed forces hold parts of two provinces and a simmering war has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014.

As in some of the other places, Russia sought to deploy troops on the ground in or near Nagorno-Karabakh as peacekeepers, but had previously failed on that front. That was due in part to a lack of confidence in Yerevan and Baku that Moscow was an honest broker.



Russia has substantial economic ties with both countries; Azerbaijan is a major purchaser of Russian weaponry.

But Moscow’s most prominent diplomatic effort has been through the Minsk Group, an initiative headed by France, Russia, and the United States under the aegis of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The subtext to the Minsk Group was that Western nations -- NATO allies France and the United States -- had a strategic role to play in a region that Moscow still considers part of its historic sphere of influence.

With the new peace deal, Russia gets its troops on the ground -- and potentially pushes Paris and Washington out of the picture once and for all.

And according to the text published by the Kremlin, as well as remarks from Putin’s spokesman, Turkish peacekeepers will not be deploying, something that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev suggested would be happening.

Outrage Erupts In Armenia After Nagorno-Karabakh Deal Announced

“Yes, the Minsk Group is dead. Seems so,” Bryza, who also served as U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan from 2010-12, told RFE/RL. “Russia has filled the vacuum. As did Turkey, for that matter.”

Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center in Yerevan, said the deal was very much a Russian one, a fact that further imperiled the Minsk Group.

“The terms of this new agreement grant Russia the most important of Moscow’s objectives: a dominant military presence on the ground,” Giragosian said.

“The prior lack of any direct military presence in Nagorno-Karabakh was one of the most distinctive aspects of the Karabakh conflict, standing in stark contrast to every other such conflict within the former Soviet space. And that absence was a long-standing irritant for Moscow,” he told RFE/RL in an e-mail.

The deal cements major battlefield gains by Azerbaijan’s forces and will leave Baku in control of about 40 percent of Nagorno-Karabakh itself, as well as nearly all of the surrounding territory that had long been held by Armenian forces.

Prior to the outbreak that started in late September, Armenian-backed forces controlled the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh, plus parts of the seven surrounding districts -- territory that collectively amounted to around 13 percent of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan Captures Key City In Nagorno-Karabakh

Now, the deal means Azerbaijan will control a sizable chunk of the territory it lost in the early 1990s.

Moscow also achieved another objective, Giragosian said: pressure on Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.

Pashinian’s independent foreign policy streak has vexed the Kremlin since he came to power in 2018 in a popular uprising known as the Velvet Revolution -- the kind of political change that makes Moscow uneasy.

"This enhanced Russian leverage will not only keep Armenia well within the Russian orbit, it will only further limit Armenia's options and orientation in seeking closer relations with the West," Giragosian said.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Yerevan in October 2019. “This enhanced Russian leverage will...keep Armenia well within the Russian orbit," one analyst says.

Some analysts said there were potential pitfalls for Russia.

Mark Galeotti, a London-based political observer and expert on Russian security agencies, said Russia deploying its troops to the region isn’t necessarily a slam-dunk win for Moscow.

“This is an additional burden on its military and treasury. It does bake a role for itself into the geopolitics of the region, to be sure, but this was a part of the world in which it was already meant to be dominant?” he wrote in an opinion first published in The Moscow Times. “When you have to escalate your commitment to retain your position, that does not seem a sign of progress so much as laboring to hold back decline.”

Steven Mann, who was a co-chair of the Minsk Group in the mid-2000s and retired as a U.S. diplomat in 2009, said the clear winner in his mind is Azerbaijan, given its battlefield victories.

As for Russia, its leading role in cementing the peace deal was no surprise, and the deployment of peacekeepers not a major coup for Moscow, given its long-standing dominance in the region, he said.

“Russia has always been the predominant military power, so I don’t think the deployment of the peacekeepers changes that overarching fact,” Mann told RFE/RL.

“I reject the idea that Russia has any special rights over its former republics. They’re independent countries. They have the right to choose their own policies,” he said. “But frankly, if you wanted peacekeepers on the ground, it’s hard to see where they would have come from but Russia.”

Russian military planes with peacekeepers on board are seen after landing at Erebuni Airport outside Yerevan on November 10.

Carey Cavanaugh, a former U.S. diplomat who helped organize the 2001 talks in Key West, Florida, where the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents came close to reaching a resolution, said the deal was a clear victory for Azerbaijan, given its military gains. But he disagreed that Russia was a clear winner, suggesting that Moscow had been forced by the circumstances to find a way to avert a major escalation.

The danger that Moscow had faced, Cavanaugh said, was a continued fight by Azerbaijan, which could have threatened Armenia and potentially sparked desperate military acts -- for example, a missile attack on Baku, or targeting the Caspian-to-Mediterranean oil pipeline -- that would then have sucked Russia and Turkey into a deeper conflict.

The deal was a way “to staunch the bloodletting,” he told RFE/RL. “They had to stop it from going any further, over the precipice, where it would have been ‘desperate-times-call-for-desperate measures’.”

And while the Pashinian government’s policies may have irked Moscow, Aliyev has been more careful, said Aleksandr Baunov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.

“Among the former Soviet states, Azerbaijan has always been an example of how to follow a foreign policy that is entirely independent from Russia, while maintaining a good relationship with Moscow and Putin,” he wrote in an analysis published on November 8.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev gestures as he addresses the nation in Baku

 on November 9.

“This example is also important for Russia itself, as it shows that good relations with Moscow don’t have to come at the cost of submission or signing up for Russia-led integration projects,” Baunov said.

One of the most important Russian-led integration projects throughout the former Soviet Union has been the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Moscow-led alliance with a mutual defense provision similar to that of NATO’s Article Five.

Armenia is a member. Azerbaijan is not.

But the peace deal may hand Baku gains without making it more subservient to Russia -- even though it will have Russian troops on its territory.

Whatever its potential downsides for the Kremlin, the deal “in many ways addresses core Russian interests in the conflict, and is perhaps the best outcome (at least in short term) Moscow could get out of the situation,” Aleksandr Gabuyev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote on Twitter.

Mike Eckelis a senior correspondent in Prague, where he reports on developments in Russia, Ukraine, and around the former Soviet Union, as well as news involving cybercrime and money laundering. Before joining RFE/RL in 2015, he worked for the Associated Press in Moscow. He has also reported and edited for The Christian Science Monitor, Al Jazeera America, Voice of America, and the Vladivostok News.

Armenians protest Nagorno-Karabakh truce terms for a 3rd day

Protesters with Armenian flags walk along a street during a protest against an agreement to halt fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, in Yerevan, Armenia, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020. Thousands of people flooded the streets of Yerevan once again on Wednesday, protesting an agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan to halt the fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, which calls for deployment of nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeepers and territorial concessions. Protesters clashed with police, and scores have been detained. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

By ASSOCIATED PRESS |
PUBLISHED: November 12, 2020 
By AVET DEMOURIAN | Associated Press

YEREVAN, Armenia — Thousands massed Thursday in Armenia’s capital to protest the terms of a cease-fire agreement that gave territorial concessions to Azerbaijan in the long-running conflict over the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The rally marked the third straight day of demonstrations triggered by the truce to halt more than six weeks of deadly fighting between the two ex-Soviet nations. Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994.

The Moscow-brokered agreement calls for Armenia to turn over control of some areas its holds outside Nagorno-Karabakh’s borders to Azerbaijan.


It prompted celebrations in Baku, but angered Armenians, and many took to the streets soon after it was announced early Tuesday. Protesters stormed government buildings and demanded that the pact be invalidated.


Russian air-force cargo plane Ilyushin Il-76 MD flies over Yerevan, Armenia, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020. More than a dozen planes carrying Russian peacekeepers headed for Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday, hours after Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to halt fighting over the separatist region and amid signs this cease-fire would hold where others hadn’t. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)






A police officer guards as people gather in a street during a protest against an agreement to halt fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, in Yerevan, Armenia, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020. Thousands of people flooded the streets of Yerevan once again on Wednesday, protesting an agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan to halt the fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, which calls for deployment of nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeepers and territorial concessions. Protesters clashed with police, and scores have been detained. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

At a large rally Wednesday, Armenian opposition parties and their supporters demanded that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian resign, calling the agreement he signed “treacherous” and “humiliating.”

Late in the evening, lawmakers called an emergency session of parliament to consider Pashinian’s dismissal but didn’t have a quorum to follow through with it. Pashinian’s faction holds 88 of 132 seats in parliament, and its members didn’t show up.

Armenian authorities said Thursday they detained 10 opposition politicians on charges of fomenting mass unrest. Naira Zograbyan, a member of the Prosperous Armenia opposition party, said at Thursday’s rally that those detained were political prisoners and expressed concern about further crackdowns on the opposition.

Crowds of people marched through the center of Yerevan and denounced Pashinian, chanting “Nikol, go away!” and “Nikol the traitor!” Over 60 people were detained, Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for decades. Heavy fighting that flared up on Sept. 27 marked the biggest escalation in over a quarter-century, killing hundreds and possibly thousands of people.

Several cease-fires in the past six weeks failed to halt the violence, but the current agreement appeared to be holding, with neither side reporting any more fighting since it came into force.

The truce came days after Azerbaijan pushed deeper into Nagorno-Karabakh and took control of the city of Shushi, strategically positioned on heights overlooking the regional capital of Stepanakert.

While Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev called the agreement a “glorious victory,” Pashinian insisted in a series of video statements that he had no other choice. On Thursday, he said he signed the pact after the military reported that “the war urgently needs to be stopped,” and the separatist leader of Nagorno-Karabakh told him that “we could lose Stepanakert in a matter of hours.”

Under the agreement, Russia began to deploy peacekeepers to the region — a total of 1,960 of them are to move in under a five-year mandate.

Turkey, which threw its weight behind Azerbaijan in the conflict and sought to play a more prominent role in the peace process, will be involved in monitoring the cease-fire.

Russian and Turkish defense ministers signed a memorandum Wednesday to create a joint monitoring center in Azerbaijan — a move announced earlier this week by Aliyev.

At the same time Russian officials underscored that Ankara’s involvement will be limited to the work of the center on Azerbaijani soil, and Turkish peacekeepers will not go to Nagorno-Karabakh.

“The center will operate remotely, using technical means of control, including drones, to determine the situation on the ground in Karabakh and determine which side is observing and which is violating the cease-fire,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

__

Associated Press writer Daria Litvinova in Moscow contributed.

Armenians Threaten Lawmakers, RFE/RL Bureau Following Nagorno-Karabakh Truce
November 10, 2020 

By RFE/RL's Armenian Service

The incident at RFE/RL's bureau in Yerevan happened in the early hours of the morning of November 10, when protesters also stormed government buildings and parliament (pictured).

YEREVAN -- Armenia's ombudsman, Arman Tatoyan, has condemned the violence by protesters amid unrest triggered by the signing of a Russian-brokered agreement with Azerbaijan to end fighting over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Tatoyan said in a statement on November 10 that an attack on parliament speaker Ararat Mirzoyan, and a subsequent incident involving about 40 men who swarmed the bureau of RFE/RL's Armenian Service (Azatutyun) in Yerevan threatening journalists was "unacceptable."

"Violence against Ararat Mirzoyan is unacceptable and deserves all condemnation, especially as he had a child with him," Tatoyan said in the statement.

"The attack on the Yerevan office of Radio Liberty should be condemned. According to the information at this time, there was an attempt to attack the property and equipment of the media, and there was also an attack on media personnel," the ombudsman added.

The November 10 announcement of a Russia-brokered truce to end fighting between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenians in the enclave has threatened to spark a political crisis in Armenia, where angry protesters stormed government buildings and parliament.

The mob later rushed RFE/RL's bureau, calling the broadcaster's Armenian Service "traitors" and "Turks" in a tirade against the government over what they perceive as a surrender in Nagorno-Karabakh.

"You are responsible for the deaths of my friends [in Nagorno-Karabakh]," one of the attackers charged.

Others said they wanted to destroy Azatutyun's computer servers to keep journalists from going on the air.

RFE/RL acting President Daisy Sindelar said that what happened at the Yerevan bureau was "a reprehensible assault on the essential duty of journalists to serve as impartial witnesses during major news events."

"Our Armenian Service, Azatutyun, is one of the few media outlets in Armenia that has aimed to present all sides of a deeply divisive conflict. We call on the police and public alike to support the right of Azatutyun and all independent journalists to report the news, objectively and in full, without threat of violence or scapegoating," Sindelar added.

The Union of Journalist of Armenia also strongly condemned the attacks and any threats against media.

Artak Hambardzumian, an executive producer with RFE/RL's Armenian Service, said he identified one of the men as Gerasim Vardanian, a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun), one of nearly two dozen political parties that are demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation.

Hambardzumian said the men tried to break the door to the bureau and attack him and a cameraman.

PSA

‘PLEASE DO NOT BLOW VAPE SMOKE INTO YOUR XBOX SERIES X,’ SAYS MICROSOFT

12 November 2020

by Richard Breslin

Yes you’ve read that headline correctly; Microsoft has had to warn players via social media not to blow vape smoke into the Xbox Series X console.

Credit: Microsoft

Earlier in the week a video was shared across social media which appears to show smoke coming from an Xbox Series X console. The video was apparently made to give the impression that there was something wrong with the console in question, as some form of hoax.

However there wasn’t anything wrong with the console. The reason why the console was seemingly blowing smoke was because the console owner was blowing vape smoke into the bottom end of the Xbox Series X, causing the “smoke” to seep through the vents.

Check it out in the video below.

CANSADO de las FAKE NEWS.
Os dejo un video MIO explicando porque es Fake lo de la consola "Quemada" y como han logrado este efecto incluso estando la consola "APAGADA" pic.twitter.com/LfXzIBSu6N— Xbox Studio (@XboxStudio) November 11, 2020

In an attempt to put a stop to this viral behaviour so that it doesn’t become a widespread issue across social media, the official Xbox page sent out a tweet.

“We can’t believe we have to say this, but please do not blow Vape smoke into your Xbox Series X,” said the page, officially creating a meme.

We can't believe we have to say this, but please do not blow vape smoke into your Xbox Series X.— Xbox (@Xbox) November 11, 2020

To add humour to the situation, Xbox followed-up with a tweet sharing links for any Xbox Series X related support.

“For any non-Vape related support questions please check out the info here,” the team tweeted.

For any non-vape related support questions please check out the info here: https://t.co/3CVPbbNm6D— Xbox (@Xbox) November 11, 2020

To add further humour, Anthony Carboni host of Star Wars Emmy-Award winning show “We have Concerns” tweeted “You’re not my dad.”

You’re not my dad https://t.co/eoN0dyMecI— Anthony Carboni (@acarboni) November 11, 2020

Joking aside, if you own an Xbox Series X or any console for that matter, it doesn’t matter if you’re a member of Vape Nation or not, don’t blow vape smoke into your console.

The Xbox Series X|S released worldwide this week on Tuesday, November 10th.

Console rival PlayStation 5 also releases this week, today in North America, Australia and New Zealand. The PS5 will then release everywhere else across the world on Thursday, November 19th.

Can Trump actually stage a coup and stay in office for a second term?

Trump refuses to acknowledge Biden’s win, but experts say there isn’t a constitutional path forward for him to remain president

The fight to vote is supported by About this content
Sam Levine in New York Thu 12 Nov 2020 
 

Donald Trump participates in a Veterans Day observance at Arlington national cemetery in Virginia on 11 November. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

Joe Biden won the presidential election, a fact that Donald Trump and other Republicans refuse to acknowledge.

Trump's longshot election lawsuits: where do things stand?
Read more 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/10/donald-trump-longshot-election-lawsuits

There are worries the president and other Republicans will make every effort to stay in power. “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, said on Tuesday. William Barr, the attorney general, has also authorized federal prosecutors to begin to investigate election irregularities, a move that prompted the head of the justice department’s election crimes unit to step down from his position and move to another role.

Despite all of Trump’s machinations, it is extremely unlikely he can find a way to stay in power or stage a coup. Here’s an explanation of why:

Donald Trump refuses to accept that Joe Biden won the presidential election. Is there a constitutional path for him to stage a coup and stay in office for another term?

Not really. The electoral college meets on 14 December to cast its vote for president and nearly every state uses the statewide popular vote to allocate its electors. Biden is projected to win far more than the 270 electoral votes he needs to become president. His victory doesn’t hinge on one state and he has probably insurmountable leads in Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona.

There is a long-shot legal theory, floated by Republicans before the election, that Republican-friendly legislatures in places such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania could ignore the popular vote in their states and appoint their own electors. Federal law allows legislatures to do this if states have “failed to make a choice” by the day the electoral college meets. But there is no evidence of systemic fraud of wrongdoing in any state and Biden’s commanding margins in these places make it clear that the states have in fact made a choice.

“If the country continues to follow the rule of law, I see no plausible constitutional path forward for Trump to remain as president barring new evidence of some massive failure of the election system in multiple states,” Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in elections, wrote in an email. “It would be a naked, antidemocratic power grab to try to use state legislatures to get around the voters’ choice and I don’t expect it to happen.”

For lawmakers in a single state to choose to override the clear will of its voters this way would be extraordinary and probably cause a huge outcry. For Trump to win the electoral college, several states would have to take this extraordinary step, a move that would cause extreme backlash and a real crisis of democracy throughout the country.

Play Video

3:51 One week on: how Trump handled losing the US election – video report

 A live broadcast of Donald Trump speaking from the White House is shown on screens at an election night party in Las Vegas on 3 November. Photograph: John Locher/AP

“There’s a strange fascination with various imagined dark scenarios, perhaps involving renegade state legislatures, but this is more dystopian fiction than anything likely to happen,” said Richard Pildes, a law professor at New York University. “The irony, or tragedy, is that we managed to conduct an extremely smooth election, with record turnout, under exceptionally difficult circumstances – and yet, a significant portion of the president’s supporters are now convinced that the process was flawed.”

Is there any indication Republicans in these important states are going to go along with this?

Shortly after election day, Jake Corman, the top Republican in the Pennsylvania state senate, indicated his party would “follow the law” in Pennsylvania, which requires awarding electors to the winner of the popular vote. In an October op-ed, Corman said the state legislature “does not have and will not have a hand in choosing the state’s presidential electors or in deciding the outcome of the presidential election”.

Could Republicans ignore the popular vote and choose their own pro-Trump electors?
Read more https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/25/trump-attack-election-electors-republicans

But on Tuesday, Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature said they wanted to investigate allegations of voter fraud. There’s no evidence of widespread malfeasance in the state, but the move is alarming because it could be the beginning of an effort to undermine the popular vote results in the state. The Republican-led legislature in Michigan is also investigating the election, as are Republicans in Wisconsin. There’s no evidence of widespread wrongdoing in either place.
Is this related in any way to the lawsuits Trump is filing?

Trump’s campaign has filed a slew of legally dubious suits since election day. The purpose of these suits appears not to be to actually overturn the election results, but to try to create uncertainty and draw out the counting process.

Each state has its own deadlines for certifying election results that are then used to allocate its electoral college votes. In at least two states, Pennsylvania and Michigan, Trump’s campaign is seeking to block officials from certifying results.

That certification timeline is important because federal law says that as long as election results are finalized by 8 December this year, the result is “conclusive”. That provides a safeguard against Congress, which is responsible for counting the electoral college votes, from second-guessing election results. By dragging out the process, the Trump campaign may be seeking to blow past that deadline and create more wiggle room to second-guess the results.

Even if that is the Trump campaign’s hope, courts are unlikely to step in, Pildes said.

“States are going to start certifying their vote totals beginning in less than 10 days, and there is no basis in the claims made thus far for the courts to stop that process,” he said.

Play Video

5:51 Can Joe Biden and Kamala Harris unite America after Trump? – video explainer

Say the worst-case scenario comes to fruition and Republican-led legislatures override the will of the people in several states. Is there any safeguard to stop Trump?

Yes. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada all have Democratic governors who would refuse to approve a set of Trump electors with the popular vote clearly showing Biden winning their state. Instead, they would submit the electors Biden is entitled to as the winner of the popular vote.

It would then fall to Congress, which is charged with counting the votes from the electoral college, to decide what to do. The law that outlines the process for how Congress should handle a dispute in electors from a state is extremely confusing, but experts believe the slate backed by a state’s governor is the legally sound one. There is a rival theory that the president of the Senate, Mike Pence, could have control over the process. A dispute over electors between the US House and Senate is a worst-case scenario and the US supreme court would probably be asked to step in.

Regardless of however long a dispute is, the constitution does set one final deadline. Even if counting is ongoing, the president and vice-president’s terms both end at noon on 20 January. At that point if there isn’t a final result in the race, the speaker of the House – probably Nancy Pelosi – would become the acting president.

Donald Trump’s refusal to concede …

… risks jeopardising the transition for president elect Joe Biden, vice president elect Kamala Harris, and all those who believe in justice. It could disrupt efforts to take rapid action on the escalating pandemic, the climate crisis, and the migrant emergency in Central America. Trump’s false accusations of voter fraud are already being thrown out of courts, and appear to subvert the very foundations of democracy.

'No Laughing Matter': Pompeo's Comment On Legitimacy Of U.S. Election Raises Eyebrows At Home And Abroad
November 11, 2020 

By Tony Wesolowsky

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: “A smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”

In his post as the senior U.S. diplomat, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is charged with promoting democratic values.

That’s why his comments casting doubt on the election of former Vice President Joe Biden as the next U.S. president are prompting concern and outrage, with many questioning what kind of signals the remarks could be sending around the world.

Speaking to journalists in Washington on November 10, Pompeo was asked if the State Department was working with Biden to ensure a smooth transition of power in the interest of national security. Pompeo replied that he expected “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”


Pompeo's remarks came as he is due to head off on a foreign tour with a stop in Georgia, which has been rocked by protests amid opposition claims of vote-rigging during recent parliamentary elections there. During his trip, which will include stops in Turkey, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates, Pompeo will likely be meeting with world leaders who have already congratulated Biden.

Despite the fact that the November 3 election has been called in favor of Biden, who state ballot counts show secured more than enough Electoral College votes to win the presidency, Trump and his campaign have made unfounded allegations of electoral fraud and are trying to overturn the results in several states through the courts.

Pompeo later dismissed as “ridiculous” any suggestion that Trump’s evidence-free claims of widespread vote fraud could hurt America’s credibility when weighing in on foreign elections, and he continued to maintain that Trump might have won the election.

“Our adversaries should know that we’re ready, we’re continuing to work, we’ll work all the way through January. And then on January 20th, we’ll have a transition, whether it’s to a Trump administration -- a second Trump administration, as I spoke about today -- or to an administration led by former Vice President Biden,” he said in an interview with conservative U.S. radio host Tony Perkins.

In another interview on November 10, this one with Fox News, Pompeo appeared to warn Biden’s team over what he suggested could be inappropriate conversations with foreign leaders. He pointed to the Logan Act, a 1799 law that bars private citizens from conducting foreign policy on behalf of the United States.

“I’m always worried when people are engaging in activities, speaking with foreign leaders, in a way that represents things, that might be representing things that aren’t true or might be attempting to influence American foreign policy in ways that are inconsistent with what the law requires,” Pompeo said.

“You know the Logan Act. I know the Logan Act. I hope that all those folks who are out there having these conversations aren’t violating that law. I’m sure the Department of Justice will be keeping a good eye on that for us,” he said.

Due to the Trump administration's refusal to concede the election, congratulatory phone calls to Biden from world leaders -- normally facilitated in past transitions by the U.S. State Department -- are taking place through other channels.

Mark Takano, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from California, voiced the dismay felt by many after Pompeo’s comments.

“Secretary Pompeo’s job is to call out authoritarian behavior abroad but his comments today made a mockery of our own democratic process,” Takano wrote on Twitter.

Biden, at least publicly, appeared to dismiss Pompeo’s remarks, saying “there is no evidence” backing the assertions of election fraud. He called Trump's refusal to concede an "embarrassment" that will "not help the president's legacy."

But others, including members of Congress, took Pompeo to task.

Eliot Engel, the outgoing chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement that Pompeo “shouldn’t play along with baseless and dangerous attacks on the legitimacy of last week’s election.”

"The State Department should now begin preparing for President-elect Biden’s transition,” said Engel, who has been a vocal critic of Pompeo.

Richard Haass, a veteran U.S. diplomat and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the timing and context meant Pompeo’s remarks were no laughing matter.

“In another context, in another world, at another time, @SecPompeo's comment re a transition to a 2nd Trump administration might have been funny. But not in this context, in this world, at this time. Too much at stake for our democracy & our standing,” he wrote on Twitter.

Guy Verhofstadt, an EU liberal lawmaker and former Belgian prime minister, raised the specter of Russian President Vladimir Putin by accusing Pompeo on Twitter of “disingenuously preparing the ground for Putin-style authoritarianism!”

Pompeo also lashed out at a reporter’s question about how Trump’s rejection of the election results would be interpreted overseas.

“That’s ridiculous, and you know it’s ridiculous, and you asked it because it’s ridiculous,” Pompeo told the reporter who asked if Trump's stance jeopardized U.S. standing in the world. “You asked a question that is ridiculous. This department cares deeply to make sure that elections around the world are safe and secure and free and fair, and my officers risk their lives to ensure that that happens.”

In the recent past, Pompeo and the State Department have expressed concerns about irregularities in elections from Tanzania to Ivory Coast and Belarus.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus was declared the landslide winner of an August 9 poll that opponents and the West judged was rigged. The West -- including the United States -- has refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate leader of Belarus, and dozens of Belarusian officials have been sanctioned by Washington as well as the European Union amid a wave of protests that have been cruelly crushed by Lukashenka’s regime.

“We want good outcomes for the Belarusian people, and we’ll take actions consistent with that,” Pompeo told RFE/RL in Prague on August 12.

Pompeo Says U.S. Will Look At Stopping Oil Shipments To Belarus

“We’ve opposed the fact that he’s now inaugurated himself,” Pompeo said of Lukashenka in an interview with Fox News in October.

Now, the 66-year-old Lukashenka, in power since 1994, has seized on baseless doubts about the U.S. presidential election promulgated by Trump, Pompeo, and other Republicans in the United States to suggest Belarus is being unfairly singled out.

“Let's see how the [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] will react to this,” Lukashenka was quoted on November 7 as saying by the state-run BelTA news agency. “And let's wait and see the German parliament, as I said yesterday, demand a new election in the United States. Today we see that a new election is warranted based on all kinds of irregularities, even domestic legislation violations."

In a January 2019 report on Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, whose 2018 reelection was not recognized by the United States and other Western countries, the State Department wrote: “On January 10, the term of former President Nicolas Maduro ended. He sought to remain in power based on his claimed ‘victory’ in the 2018 presidential elections widely condemned as neither free nor fair, a claim not accepted by the democratically elected National Assembly.”

The Trump administration’s record on foreign elections has been inconsistent. Trump congratulated Putin on his disputed 2018 reelection, even though his briefing notes for the telephone call said, “Do not congratulate.”

Trump congratulated incumbent Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on a “peaceful, fair, and transparent contest” in 2017, even though Kenya’s Supreme Court later annulled that vote.

The Trump administration also congratulated Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez after he successfully had the results of a violently disputed 2017 election overturned.

In his talks with senior Georgian officials next week, Pompeo will express U.S. “support for Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and “urge further progress in democratic reforms,” according to the U.S. Embassy in Georgia.

Tony Wesolowsky is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL in Prague, covering Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and Central Europe, as well as energy issues. His work has also appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists.