Չի՞ կարող լինել ռուսական «գունավոր հեղափոխություն»

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1. Aha says:

   Հունվար 26, 2023 at 04:00

   Here is my short take on all this. I agree that the 2018 revolution was backed by outside forces (geopolitical centers) but I can’t automatically point the finger to Russia or the West for that matter. Historians will one day study this period and explain everything but that will not happen before at least 20-30 years.

   Arguments favoring a Russian involvement:
   – No Russian plane landed in Yerevan (literally and metaphorically) during or after the revolution to save the incumbent leader (Serj). Planes full of intelligence operatives (literally) landed in Caracas and Minsk when the pro-Russian regimes were about to fall and they saved the day. Add to that the involvement of Gazprom employees to the protests and it is clear that at the very least, Russia did not oppose Serj’s fall,
   – The Russian peace plan was not accepted yet by the previous leader (Serj) although the latter was clearly leaning in that direction (rightly so, see appendix below). The 2016 war was a warning to Armenia and a clear sign of the collaboration between Russia and Turkey. The Sasna Tsrer operation aimed to topple the Russian peace plan before Lavrov’s arrival in Yerevan in the summer of 2016. So yes, the editor is right in that Russia wanted Armenia to accept its peace plan and had an incentive to oust the leader it did not trust, Serj. His legacy of maneuvering between US-EU-Moscow made him unreliable in the eyes of Moscow and that partly explains why Karapetyan was sent to Yerevan from Moscow, as a back-up plan in case Serj attempts another maneuver.

   Arguments opposing a Russian involvement:
   – The overwhelming majority of the Pashinyan team and satellite NGOs that played a key role in the revolution are staunchly and openly self-declared westerners,
   – Pro-Russian players were immediately marginalized upon the arrival of Pashinyan – Khachaturov, Kocharyan, Harutyunyan, later on Vanetsyan, etc,
   – The Armenian side openly backed away from the peace process irritating Moscow, to the point that Lavrov had to come out publicly in April 2020 to tell journalists that there is indeed a peace process going on, even if denied by Yerevan. If Pashinyan was a Russian stooge who came to lose a war, why would he walk away from the Russian peace plan (Lavrov plan)? which brings us to the next argument,
   – It was not at all in Russia’s interest to have an ally lose a war and get humiliated. It only chose that path when no other options remained, when Armenians rejected the Russian peace plan. From a purely objective perspective it would reflect negatively on Russia’s image, power projection, ability to find clients for its arms industry, ability to find allies, preserve its influence in the world, etc. The Lavrov plan was supposed to save Armenia’s face and prove that being an ally of Russia is useful, that Russian allies will avoid humiliating defeats, even against more powerful opponents. That even if Azerbaijan was more powerful than Armenia in almost all metrics, Russia would not let its ally down and would save its face with a peace plan. To push that logic further, it is highly probable that Russia’s objective was just that since the early 2010s – to arm Azerbaijan enough that Armenia would be forced to make concessions for a peace that Russia would thus impose and control, making them both dependent on itself by the sheer presence of its peacekeepers. Very rational for a superpower, the US did something similar with Greece-Turkey and Israel-Egypt.

   As an appendix, why I think Serj was leaning towards the Russian peace plan and peacekeepers? His meetings with LTP following the 2016 war, his declarations behind closed doors in Stepanakert warning of singing a new version of Kars-Kars, his emphasis on becoming prime minister and not handing power to Karen Karapetyan in order to take on the burden of being the responsible and sacrificed leader who would stay in history as the one who ‘sold Karabakh’, all point in that direction. I think Serj knew that he must accept the Russian peace plan, that opposing it would be suicidal for Armenia.

   So to sum it up, in my humble opinion, Russia did not initiate or organize the revolution (it is not sufficiently sophisticated for that, otherwise it would have done so in Ukraine) but when presented with the chance to get rid of a shrewd leader with a backbone (Serj), it did not oppose it. Only to realize that the new leader was completely unaligned with its objectives and concluded – under Turkish pressure and before things would get heated on the Ukrainian front – that a war was now necessary to make the Armenians understand real-politic.

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