Withdrawal of Russian base from Gyumri would multiply the likelihood of conflict: Vladimir Skachko

Political scientist Vladimir Skachko commented to Alpha News on the upcoming meeting between Vladimir Putin and Nikol Pashinyan and possible scenarios for the further development of relations between Russia and Armenia.

In the expert’s view, Armenia’s future will, in his assessment, largely depend on whether Yerevan maintains the current level of relations with Moscow or continues its course toward closer ties with European and Western structures.

“During their upcoming summit meeting, Putin and Pashinyan will naturally discuss two issues: what the relationship between Russia and Armenia will look like, which will, in principle, determine Armenia’s future. There’s a very simple fork in the road here: either Armenia maintains the current level of relations, in which case there are prospects for improvement, and the status quo guarantees it the relatively stable standard of living it has now.

The other option is a break from Russia in an attempt to join the European community economically, politically, morally and so on, in which case it would mean that Armenia will run into the same kind of European, Western deception that Ukraine ran into,” Skachko said.

According to the expert, a separate topic of the talks could be the future of the Russian military base in Gyumri, since its possible withdrawal, in Skachko’s view, would affect Armenia’s security situation.

“A separate issue may be the deployment of the Russian military base in Gyumri. If that base is removed, if Russia goes ahead with removing it, then the likelihood of military conflict in Armenia would increase many times over, because, by and large, there’s no one left to defend Armenia except the Armenians themselves, and how well they defended, for example, Nagorno-Karabakh under Pashinyan is plain for everyone to see,” Skachko concluded.