State Duma member sees plea for help in Pashinyan’s statements

When speaking about Armenia’s borders during the Soviet era, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, might have hinted that Yerevan is being held hostage by the West, Alexey Zhuravlev, First Deputy Chairman of Russia’s State Duma Defense Committee, said in an interview with NEWS.ru.

Zhuravlev noted that Armenia had in fact been a buffer zone between Russia and Turkey until the establishment of the USSR, and it was under the control of Western agencies back then as well.

“Pashinyan has invented another pretext to actually cede Karabakh,” Zhuravlev noted.

According to him, Pashinyan might have been hinting at his desire to avoid a repeat of events of the early 1920s, when the country was “governed by the Entente,” and that only joining the USSR helped preserve both Armenian statehood and the existence of the Armenian people. Zhuravlev believes that Pashinyan is attempting to seek assistance from Russia and the CSTO in this manner.

“This is a way of indicating that he is a hostage of the West and of asking for help from Russia and the CSTO, from which he publicly threatens to withdraw,” Zhuravlev concluded.

Earlier, Pashinyan stated that renouncing the Soviet-era borders would mean abandoning sovereignty.