Putin’s agents in Armenia

The bigger the threat of becoming a member of the Eurasian Union becomes for Armenia the more materialistic the pressures on part of Russia become and the more silent our political elite becomes. Except a few politicians the rest are mostly avoiding answering questions about the Eurasian Union. This threat may become much more realistic in November when the Association Agreement is signed in Vilnius.

The reason why the Republican politicians are uncertain in their answers is because they don’t know what’s right for Armenia – EU or the Eurasian Union. Also, they are not aware of the exact standpoint of their leader Serzh Sargyan in this regard. The reasons of silence of opposition politicians are both strange and understandable.

Almost all the opposition parties are racing with the government parties not as much for the sake of Armenia but to be well noticed and liked by Russia. The Russian Line is a sacred factor for the Armenian parties and they cannot jeopardize this for the sake of the interests of Armenia. Indeed, this doesn’t relate to all the political parties because even in government there are politicians who understand the threats of the membership to the Union and even speak about it. But as we said there is no coordinated standpoint on this issue in Armenia.

Of course, we could have analyzed the attitude of select politicians to this matter both from opposition and government in order to understand why they are avoiding to express a certain viewpoint about the Eurasian Union if of course the reason is not the eternal obedience to the Russian empire. But perhaps it’s more relevant to remember one of the political processes of the past two years, which clearly explains the “Eurasian silence”.

We mean the draft law initiated by the Heritage party and failed in the parliament. During the last convocation of the parliament Heritage initiated the draft law on lustration, which related to revealing the spies of the period before the independence of 1991, which would keep the state system away from the former or current KGB spies. Of course, Heritage was not the original initiator of this bill.

There were other similar initiatives, which indeed failed. The peculiarity of the initiative of Heritage was that it enabled the Armenian citizens to understand which of the political parties of Armenia would be against that. Indeed, the Republican party was against.

So was the then-opposition party Armenian National Congress, some of the members of which soon appeared in the parliament of the new convocation. After the parliamentary elections the talks about the law on lustration ceased. Heritage also forgot about this initiative, which in the past was strongly fighting against foreign interference.

With a strange coincidence, the post-electoral processes of 2013 also ended with the visit of Raffi Hovhannisian to Moscow. Now Armenia is facing a serious and crucial dilemma.

Almost day-by-day we can see the pressure of Russia on Armenia trying to keep it away from signing the Association Agreement in Vilnius. In these conditions, lustration would become a seal salvation for the small number of politicians and the big number of citizens who don’t wish to obey the interests of the Russian empire.

But the problem is that because of lustration Armenia might lose its sovereignty and political system. Because these circles are filled with the agents, sorry partners, of Vladimir Putin.

By Robert Ter-Sargsyan