Paul Goble
Staunton, June 24 – Calls coming out of Armenia and finding some resonance elsewhere to form a kind of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) without and opposed to Russia are nothing more than a warmed-over version of GUAM and equally “stillborn,” according to Nikita Mendkovich.
The head of Russia’s Eurasian Analytic Club says the idea was first floated by Armenian leader Nikol Pashinyan a month ago (https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8636026) and then apparently was discussed by diplomats from some of the countries of the region in Brussels and Vienna (https://t.me/enabludatel/3943).
He suggests that what is going on is a new attempt “to revive the long-ago failed project of GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova) which was established as a regional grouping opposed to any integration with Russia and will fail for the same reasons (vfokuse.mail.ru/articles/69627944-ekspert-pochemu-proekt-sng-bez-rossii-obrechen-na-proval/).
Indeed, its rapid failure is even more likely because it is impossible to imagine any organization in which both Armenia and Azerbaijan would be members without the balancing influence of the Russian Federation. That is something everyone must recognize, Mendkovich says, and dismiss such talk as worse that meaningless except as a kind of voice of despair.
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