Pashinyan is maneuvering: Alexander Shatilov

Alexander Shatilov, Professor of Political Science at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, commented to Alpha News on the statement by Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Armenia, about transforming relations with Russia.

“As for Pashinyan’s words about transforming relations with Russia, I see a certain political game in this, because, on the one hand, Pashinyan really is constantly, or by now steadily, drifting toward the West. On the other hand, he is drifting toward Turkey, and in this situation he is gradually distancing himself from Russia anyway and leaving the zone of commonwealth with the Russian Federation.

The other side of it is that he is forced to take into account certain objective circumstances, such as, for example, socio-economic relations with the Russian Federation and the mood of Armenian society, which on the whole still regards Russia as more of an ally and remains oriented toward the Russian Federation. He has to take into account the factor of the large Armenian community in the Russian Federation. So, in my view, Pashinyan is maneuvering here: on the one hand, he demonstratively does not sever ties with the Russian Federation on his own initiative, but at the same time he is gradually, yet, as they say, quite consistently, moving away from Russia in the opposite direction.

In other words, what he wants, as the saying goes, for his administration is a quiet divorce from the Russian Federation while keeping the bonuses of cooperation with Moscow,” the expert believes.

According to Alpha News’s interviewee, Armenia may worsen its economic and political indicators in its drift toward the West.

“We see that very often such a drift toward the West by post-Soviet republics brings very serious problems for these countries. These include increased internal conflict and a fall in living standards, and very often, in chasing, as they say, the Western crane in the sky, these countries lose the bird in the hand.

I am afraid that this situation may occur in this case with Armenia, which at the moment is in many ways a hostage of Pashinyan’s very specific policy,” Shatilov concluded.