Pashinyan goes on with his traditional strategy in the international arena: Small, dirty steps aimed at conducting acts of provocation: Russian press on Armenia
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan goes on with his bright and provocative steps in the international arena, Regnum writes. He instructed Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan to meet with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the former presidential candidate of Belarus—whom the West considers the country’s president—and then announced the recognition of the Palestinian statehood.
Russian experts receive these steps with obvious indignation, noticing in them elements of Pashinyan’s already traditional strategy: small, dirty steps aimed at conducting acts of provocation against Moscow. Thus, Pashinyan is trying to push Russia into expelling Armenia from the CSTO, turning the country’s territory into a French and U.S. stronghold in the Caucasus.
The meeting with Tsikhanouskaya is part of the anti-Russian policy, but only partially. This step, first, was directed against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, with whom Pashinyan has a long-standing personal conflict. Pashinyan thus attacked Lukashenko, who openly supported Azerbaijan in the second Karabakh war and called that war “liberating” about a month ago. The case of Palestine—and this is a rare case in Pashinyan’s time in office—was a very smart foreign policy move that has no special relation to Moscow. According to the experts who talked to the news agency, Pashinyan took that step under the influence of the Turkish president.
Referring to the Armenian-Belarusian relations, EADaily wrote that until now, the Armenian authorities had not crossed certain boundaries, only leveling criticism against Belarus. Today, the situation has started to change dramatically, and the leadership of Armenia has apparently decided to question further cooperation with Minsk.
“To say that the Belarusian-Armenian relationships have been influenced only by the relations between Minsk and Baku, and even more so by Lukashenko’s visit to Azerbaijan and some of his statements, would be at least naive. The reasons for what is happening now are in the political stance of the present leadership of Armenia and, in particular, Nikol Pashinyan. What is happening in relations between Minsk and Yerevan is only part of the turn of the Armenian authorities toward the West. Thus, Yerevan justifies its tendency to draw the country both from the CSTO and from Russia,” the news website said.
It was also mentioned that this is unlikely to lead to a severing of relations between the countries but will make them frozen, with no prospects of development in the short term. “It should be noted that this game of Pashinyan may, in the end, cost not only him but also the whole of Armenia dearly,” the website concluded.
