ARMENIA Pašinyan’s resistance to all opposition

Long attacked by opposition parties and movements, and even by the Apostolic Church, for his policy of “normalization” of the conflict with Azerbaijan and emancipation from the protection of Russia, the Armenian president categorically rules out the possibility of early elections . But not even the Kremlin raises its tone, knowing that Yerevan cannot do without Moscow’s military and economic support.

Yerevan () – The Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pašinyan, has long been the object of all kinds of invectives and attacks in his country, from opposition parties and movements and even from the Apostolic Church, but also from the abroad, with criticism from Baku and Moscow of its policy of “normalization” of the conflict with Azerbaijan and of emancipation from the protection of Russia. Several opposition deputies are calling for his dismissal after the handover of some border towns to the Azerbaijanis, but his party, Civil Agreement, responds that they take these threats “with humor” and absolutely rule out the possibility of early elections.

The negotiations with the Azeris, for which Pašinyan is accused of “giving in to the enemy”, are paradoxically his best guarantee of defense against any attack, as observer Vadim Dubnov believes, while street protests are slowly dwindling, despite of the initiatives of the new leader of the Armenian protest movement “Tavowš in the name of the Fatherland”, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, who is striving to unite all oppositions to get rid of the prime minister. Even from Moscow only rather benign warnings come, beyond Pašinyan’s “pro-European” rhetoric, since the Kremlin knows that Armenia will not be able to do without Russia’s military and economic support.

The absence of the Armenian prime minister at the Red Square military parade on May 9, where all the leaders of the Eurasian Csto alliance were lined up alongside Putin, was downplayed to the need to remain in Yerevan while the street protests unfolded, encouraged by the archbishop of the border eparchy. Although in reality only a few days later, when the streets of the capital were still occupied by protesters, Pašinyan made a visit to Denmark, entrusting his collaborators with control of the situation. Furthermore, he was not even present at Putin’s coronation on May 7, to which he limited himself to sending his ambassador because “the heads of state were not necessarily indicated in the protocol of the ceremony.”

In fact, Pašinyan participated in the Eurasian Higher Economic Council, of which Armenia is president, but which was held in Moscow, where he met with Putin in person, thus maintaining a more formal than effective distancing. There is also an ambiguous attitude on the Russian side: the street protests in Armenia are openly pro-Russian, supported not only by clerics, but also by people close to former president Robert Kočaryan, one of the Kremlin’s closest Armenian friends. However, they have not gone beyond rumors, with some echoes in the Yerevan Parliament.

The one who most explicitly expresses the tension with the Russians is the Secretary of the Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, who plays the controversial role in the game of sides. He has been calling for days for Moscow to withdraw all “peacekeeping” troops from border areas and especially from Zvartnots international airport, in the western suburbs of Yerevan, and explicitly speaks of the alliance with Russia as a “strategic mistake.” ». For his part, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan limits himself to stating that “relations with Russia are currently not at their highest level”, also abstaining from attending meetings of his CTO and CIS counterparts, leaving the prime minister free to adopt the positions most appropriate to the circumstances.

On the Russian side, the invectives against the Armenians are left to the exaggerated spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, while Putin limits himself to tepid and terse comments, as if he really did not believe in removing Armenia from his sphere of influence. influence. All these ambiguities end up playing into the hands of Pašinyan, who keeps repeating that “historical Armenia and current Armenia are completely different things”, trying to build a new image of the country by overcoming the contradictions of the Caucasus region and the turbulence of global geopolitics, waiting to see where they lead.

Photo: Flickr / World Economic Forum