By Backing Kocharyan, Putin on the Way to Losing Armenia, Melnikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 1 – By his support for discredited Armenian leader Robert Kocharyan, most recently in his birthday greetings to the former president yesterday (kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58419), Vladimir Putin is on his way to doing something no Russian leader has ever done before: losing Armenia as an ally, Aleksey Melnikov says.

            Putin and his regime “will support Kocharyan” because he is the embodiment of “the corrupt system which the Armenian people has risen against” but which is “the friend and ally of the Russian corrupt system,” the Russian commentator says. The peoples in neither country are the allies of such rulers (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5B895FBE7164C).

                The Kremlin leader has smiled at Nikol Pashinyan, the new head of Armenia, but Putin isn’t willing to make peace with him and come to terms with the revolution the latter is leading.  Instead, as before, Putin “will support Kocharyan,” something the Armenian people “naturally will not accept.”

            “As a result,” Melnikov continues, “the Russian border guards with time will leaveand the Russian base [in Armenia] will be removed, and everything will end with alienation, not with the people of Russia but with the powers that be of our country.” 

            Like the Bourbons, Putin has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. He has alienated Georgia and Ukraine but not taken to heart what his actions in those countries have produced. Now, he is doing the same thing in Armenia, and he will get the same result, the Russian commentator says. Yet another “failure.”