Pashinyan manipulates referendum issues, expert says

Speaking with Alpha News, Russian political scientist Alexey Anpilogov commented on Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s statement that there is no need to hold a referendum on Armenia’s accession to the EU.

According to the expert, in the event of an attempt at European integration, Armenia will lose the Russian market.

“The matter of the referendum is the matter of people’s trust in this or that idea. When Pashinyan manipulates various issues related to the referendum, he understands perfectly well that Armenian society has no clear understanding of this issue and no desire to join the European Union.

To understand how seriously this will affect the Armenian economy, it is enough to look at the difficulties with which the Armenian brandy factory was privatized, which was even prohibited from using the trademark because it was simply bought by Europeans. The same fate awaits almost the entire Armenian economy. Let me remind you that now the largest trading partner of Armenia is Russia. In the event of an attempt at European integration, Armenia will most likely completely lose the Russian market.

Everyone understands perfectly well that Armenia has now become one of the countries that are the gateway for the grey export of third-country products to the Russian market. All this will be lost in the case of integration into the European Union. European commissioners or their representatives will simply come to Armenia and begin to reshape its economy to EU standards.

So, Pashinyan, I think, has clear sociological data that the people should not be given the opportunity to choose, and they will do it themselves in some parliamentary-presidential and prime ministerial arrangements and will implement this process as a consensus of a very limited layer of elites,” Anpilogov said.

“In general, if we look at the results of European integration, the future of Armenia is seen in a fairly clear vector, that is, the transformation of Armenia into a Transcaucasian colony for the European Union. In addition, we must understand that the European Union will begin to dictate its conditions to Armenia,” Anpilogov concluded.