To win coming elections, Armenia’s ruling elite needed to crush opposition in Gyumri, Politnavigator writes

Immediately after the wave of arrests of clergymen and the mayor of Gyumri — on Oct. 21, while in Astana — Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev opened the transport routes coming from Azerbaijan, and a train carrying Kazakh grain immediately headed toward Yerevan․

Thus, the former Soviet republic was accepted into the “Turkic world,” Politnavigator writes.

As noted, on the same day, a Yerevan court sentenced Vardan Ghukasyan, the opposition mayor of Gyumri, to two months’ imprisonment on charges of accepting a bribe. The police also detained 12 municipality employees and 37 supporters of the mayor during a protest. Ruben Mkhitaryan, a lawyer and member of the In Our Way movement, was also remanded in custody. At the same time, unprecedented pressure was exerted on the members of the Gyumri City Council, with attempts to overthrow the opposition coalition that holds the majority there.

The website writes that this fully confirms the theory that, in order to win the next elections, the ruling elite needed to crush the city hall of the country’s second-largest city and neutralize the opposition forces located there. For this purpose, provocations are being used in Gyumri, and attempts are being made to set different parties and movements against each other — even to the point of starting “criminal reprisals.”

“Therefore, it is still too early to put a full stop after these events in Gyumri, since the police purge operation will obviously continue. Many now agree that Ghukasyan was arrested by order of Brussels, since this was a condition set by Eurocommissioners who hoped to eliminate the ‘Gyumri phenomenon’ and deprive the Russian military base of local community support,” the article states.

As noted, it is obvious that another high-profile trial against the Church is being prepared on the eve of the elections. This comes in addition to the fact that several archbishops are already in prison, accused of organizing mass riots and a state coup. Soon, the forced eviction of priests from churches and the seizure of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin are expected.