168: Distortion… What are you making this show for, what… what are you going to do, huh?

In the “Pressing” program Satik Seyranyan’s guest is Professor Arman Grigoryan, lecturer, doctor of political science, Lehigh University, USA.

The main theses of the interview are below.

• Elections are usually used to bring clarity to existing divisions, but the Armenian elections did not eliminate polarization in the country. Our election was just a battle of negative ratings. People were voting against something, not for something.

• I don’t know what the alternative is to the elections. If the alternative to regime change is revolution, I don’t see that revolutionary energy, nor efforts to create such an atmosphere. They do not start a revolutionary struggle with the agendas of the opposition. The views of the opposition on foreign political issues were no different from those of Pashinyan. Foreign support of Pashinyan is not an excuse for the opposition. The opposition failed to propose such an agenda that would allow for a change of power:

• Raising pensions, introducing health insurance and similar actions before the elections are considered unacceptable, illegitimate and affecting the results of the elections. Declaring himself the winner at 2 o’clock in the morning, when not even 10 percent of the votes had been counted, the stories related to the “Prosperous Armenia” party cast a serious shadow on the legitimacy of this government.

• Whenever there was a real chance to oust the current government, it was due to the unification of the opposition. It was not possible to achieve a change of power without consolidation.

• There is another side to the question. If the political force does not participate in the elections, what else should it do? There is a kind of anti-democratic thing in the conversations when they said that you should not have participated in the elections so as not to pollute votes. I accept that there is an argument that perhaps it would be better to unite, or to urge their supporters to choose one force or another, but I’m not sure that would be effective either. 

• One of the conflicts between Nikol Pashinyan’s government and his political team is the opposition between the former and the present, and no matter how much we criticize that model and say that this political force has been in power for 8 years and they should build their agenda based on their achievements, the agenda of the opposition between the former and the present is working.:

• I do not accept the argument that in 2018 there was a pure color revolution. If there was no fertile soil from within, no color revolution would take place. For example, when I listened to Robert Kocharyan and his team during this campaign, I had the impression that during his time Armenia was a paradise, and he was a pioneer of realism… But it was not so. And the factor of Robert Kocharyan is important precisely because a significant part of the population of Armenia, justified or not, connects Robert Kocharyan’s coming to power with the pre-revolutionary situation. The people, demonized, exaggerated or not, do not want to return to the power of the former:

• in Armenia in 2018 in the beginning, no one took what was happening seriously, there was always the argument that there could be no revolution in Armenia, and the government was archaic. By the time they realized the danger, it was too late to do anything.

• What is happening around Armenia is a struggle for geopolitical influence. In my opinion, Nikol Pashinyan’s government has made a commitment to change the foreign policy orientation of the country. According to them, Armenia should throw off the Russian yoke and be more independent. And it has some support in society. Having seen the examples of Ukraine and Georgia, we know that it contains many dangers, and despite this, the Armenian government is moving in that direction. If this process continues, we will be deprived of the Armenian-Russian security system in the conditions when we know how aggressive Azerbaijan is.:

• Do those talking about a non-aligned state understand that we need that alliance? After all, these are elementary things. We live in some sort of alternate reality. Anyone who contradicts this is said to be a Russian agent. What will you do if the Russians leave, they leave, they remove the 102nd military base, and Azerbaijan does not hide its aggressive intentions, it declares that 300,000 Azerbaijanis must come to Armenia, and their demands will not end with the “Peace Treaty”… When you talk about it in Armenia, they laugh. We have come to a dispute where not only arguments but also facts are disputed in Armenia:

• With special enthusiasm, they announce that Russia’s situation is not good… By the way, Iran also has problems with this process. Iran’s power and influence have grown since the last war, while US capabilities have shrunk… Trump has no serious plans to do anything to impose his will on Iran that he hasn’t already done. It is incomprehensible to me that this situation is not taken into account in Armenia.

• Suppose Europe allowed the entry of our products, will it be able to fully compensate the Russian market?

• Russia has another option for escalation that they would prefer to avoid. But if the alternative is surrender, I’m not sure Russia won’t go for their version of escalation: Russia sees the loss of Ukraine as an existential threat to its state interests, and many international analysts see talk of nuclear escalation as highly relevant. In the West, however, they believe that the Russians will not take that step. I don’t think so:

• Let them not think that Russia will leave easily and calmly and leave here. Apart from that, I am not sure that Russians washing their hands is a happy prospect for us.

• Many people in the West say that Ukraine’s war against Russia is costing us cheap because Ukrainians are dying. I mean, this is not their war. According to them, the Ukrainians should die, but they themselves should reap the benefits.

• I think it was after Nikol Pashinyan’s visit to Turkey that Erdogan announced that TRIPP is not only a geopolitical program, but also has an economic component. It was Fidan who openly spoke about it being a geopolitical project, Matthew Bryza, Paul Goble, James O’Brien… The latter clearly said in his interview that the Russians not only should not control that road, but they should not have any part in it at all.:

• There is global instability associated with a changing world order. A unipolar world has been replaced by something unknown, and predicting where a new hotbed of instability might emerge is not so much of a fantasy genre. It is a very dangerous and undesirable scenario for us, but it is not excluded. The government of Armenia has a certain opportunity to put the country on a safer path, but it did not, unlike Georgia.

• In the context of the escalation of relations with Israel and Turkey, I believe that the relations between Russia and Turkey will not escalate, however much those two states have conflicting interests.

• Naturally, many states have recognized the Armenian Genocide out of political expediency, and Israel is no exception… Although the powers of the Israeli Knesset are running out, the issue of recognizing the Armenian Genocide will not be on the agenda…

• Western hypocrisy is abhorrent in the context of the same genocide in Gaza.

• To a 70-year-old man who did not refuse to participate in the interrogation, did not show resistance, you spread the asphalt in his house, you make such a show, so what? That it is a complete ugliness there is no doubt. I am not defending Gagik Tsarukyan, but I am talking about justice, unnecessary use of violence:

• Whose dog is Sinirlioglu to change religion in Armenia? The Armenian Apostolic Church is an institution that is an obstacle to this political process, a center of resistance, which has a high reputation among the Armenian society. They speak against the AAP in Azerbaijan as well. And it does not surprise me that the mentioned people expressed their willingness to take action against the Armenian Church…

To remind: this morning it became known that famous Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus called the Turkish OSCE Secretary General Feridun Sinirlioglu, to talk to him on behalf of Nikol Pashinyan, and the latter, being sure that he was talking to Pashinyan, expressed his support in removing the Catholicos of All Armenians and converting Armenia to religion.

“Feridun Sinirlioglu made a sincere confession, thinking that he was talking to Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan, while in reality he was communicating with pranksters Vovan and Lexus. The authorities started a real persecution against the Armenian Apostolic Church. Arrests of clergy, persecution of undesirables. Everything by the order of the West,” reports the news channel. As the First Channel stated earlier, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Service, the ultimate goal of Brussels is the complete severing of centuries-old spiritual ties between Armenia and Russia. And the OSCE Secretary General is ready to help replace the Catholicos.

“- I also hope on the position of the OSCE that you can also support me in this matter. – I will deal with it too. By the way, can you do that? Can you replace the Catholicos?

– And I think that now I have trump cards in my hand, and we can change the religion. And all I can ask of you is your support in cases when we face great criticism from Karapetyan’s allies.

“Okay, I will do everything possible,” the news channel quotes that scandalous phone conversation.

• I do not rule out that at some point Nikol Pashinyan’s government will change its position towards Russia by 180 degrees. It is characteristic of him. Do you remember 2018-2020? how unmythical they were. So we have the experience of that.

Details in the video.

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