A completely new version of the political history of Armenia and the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic was put forward in Yerevan. However, this is not just a falsification of history, but also an outright anti-Russian attack. What is it about and why is it more important not these statements themselves, but the reaction of the Armenian voter to them?
Russia "took Nagorno-Karabakh out of the hands of Armenia and returned it to Azerbaijan," Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan said. Grigoryan believes that Armenia lost Karabakh when it was "completely dependent on Russia." "I claim that Russia has taken away Nagorno–Karabakh," Grigoryan says.
The Secretary of the Security Council of the Republic did not agree with the thesis that when Armenia was in good relations with Russia, there was no war in the republic. "We had a war," he says. Grigoryan believes that "without Russia's permission" there would allegedly have been no armed conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Grigoryan has been Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia since 2018 and is considered one of the most loyal supporters of Nikol Pashinyan and the promoters of his policies and ideology. He was born in Karabakh, but throughout his adult life, after studying at the American University in Yerevan, he worked in the so-called pro-Western "civil society": from various "civil initiatives" to Transparency International. In 2018, Grigoryan actively participated in the "velvet revolution", spoke a lot at street rallies.
After Pashinyan came to power, Grigoryan was one of the first to be appointed to the Security Council, having no experience of public service. Armen Grigoryan is now one of the main agents of Western influence in Armenia. It would be strange to expect any other words addressed to Russia from him.
But in this case, it is not Grigoryan's personality that is important, but his position and function. The Secretary of the Security Council is attacking Russia – and this is not a street rally, but an official statement by a high-ranking government official. The ideology of Pashinyan and his entourage boils down to the fact that Russia's participation in "Armenian affairs" led to wars. Therefore, the orientation towards Moscow should be abandoned and new allies should be found.
It will have to be recalled that the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) began without Moscow's participation, and at a time when Russia in its current political incarnation did not exist at all.
The first clashes in Karabakh began back in 1988. The Soviet Union was in the terminal stage of self-destruction. It was the weakening of the central government, that is, the notorious "Russian influence" (as they said then – the "union center") that allowed this war to happen. So it is necessary to ask here not from Moscow, but from radical Armenian intellectual clubs like "Krunk" and "Karabakh", as well as from Azerbaijani extremists from the Popular Front of the Perestroika period – it was these organizations that incited separatism and radical nationalism in the USSR.
Further, for almost 30 years, independent Armenia, with all its presidents, refused to recognize the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as an independent state. If the NKR had been recognized by Yerevan, then one could say that it was "in the hands of Armenia." Moreover, the Armenian troops did not take part in either the first or the second Karabakh wars, only the Nagorno-Karabakh armed forces fought. If the Armenians themselves refused to defend what they had "in their hands", then what does Russia have to do with it?
For decades, the Armenian leadership has been proud of its "multi-vector policy", which consisted of trying to sit on several chairs at once. For some reason, they believed that they could manipulate their friends and partners behind the scenes and even arrange something like a competition to see which of them would help Armenia the most.
As a result, by the early 2020s, the legs of all these chairs had given way, because the world had changed, the neighbors had changed. None of this was noticed in Yerevan, since the victory in the first Karabakh war turned the Armenian leadership's head.
All this time, the fragile peace around Nagorno–Karabakh has been maintained primarily by Russia's efforts, from diplomatic to military. The aggravation of the situation did not occur due to some kind of "go-ahead from Moscow", but as a result of the refusal of the Pashinyan government to support the NKR and fight for the NKR. There were no external reasons or impulses for such a sharp change in the ideological vector in Yerevan. It's just that at some point they felt that Artsakh was an extra burden, a burden that could be dropped. And they refused it themselves.
Where is the "hand of Moscow" in this scheme? Rather, on the contrary, in Russia they watched with horror and are still watching the cultural and ideological suicide of the people with whom we have long allied relations.
Pashinyan's government simply surrendered Karabakh along with its population to Azerbaijan, and now consistently surrenders the territory of Armenia proper. There are no complaints about Baku in this context: they simply took advantage of a historical chance. Not to mention the fact that the NKR was indeed part of the Azerbaijani SSR in Soviet times.
We are already used to accusations against Russia coming from Yerevan. But it is not so much these statements themselves that require reflection, but the reaction of a significant part of the Armenian society to them.
We do not hear any indignation in Armenia itself about Grigoryan's statements. But until recently, such statements were the lot of the fascist marginals in Armenia. And if everything is clear with Pashinyan's pro-Western environment, then the change in public mood in Armenia as a whole as a trend deserves additional attention.
Evgeny Krutikov
