‘It is hard to save a drowning man who has decided to drown’: Alexey Anpilogov

Speaking with Alpha News, Russian political scientist Alexey Anpilogov commented on the statement by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko about the surrender of Artsakh by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

“Lukashenko rather conveys the personal dimension of this rather complex process and a very politically sensitive, a certain common heritage, a common cultural and political social space that connected both Armenia and Belarus, and Armenia and Russia. This is a certain shared fate, within which any processes are extremely painful. But here we must understand that this attitude towards the Russian president as some kind of omnipotent figure, from my point of view, is still an incorrect formulation of the question.

Even the Russian president has certain limits to the use of his own efforts, and it is really very difficult to save a drowning man who has decided to drown, and this is how Armenia’s position towards Artsakh was built. Let me remind you that Yerevan did not recognize Artsakh and did not even try to protect it in any institutional way. This, of course, greatly complicated the position and actions of Russia, which was largely bound by such pre-settings that existed, first of all, in the relations between Armenia and Artsakh,” Anpilogov said.

History knows no “if”, the political scientist noted.

“In similar situations, Russia first went for the recognition of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and went for a very serious confrontation with the West, first on the issue of Crimea, then on the issue of new territories, to provide the residents of these territories with the opportunity to reunite with their historical homeland. History knows no ‘if’. Now both Armenia and Russia have to live in a new geopolitical reality,” Anpilogov concluded.