During the voting of the membership to the EaEU Treaty at the National Assembly, some PAP MPs did not participate in the voting. One of them, Lyova Khachatryan, appears that he was present in the session but did not vote deliberately.
In the interview with “Aravot”, Lyova Khachatryan, in response to our question of whether he feels a danger for not voting, replied, “No, absolutely not, I have my opinion. I have lived in Russia for many years, I know that it is a powerful state, and there is no problem. But first of all, we need to be ready ourselves to be involved in any economy. Russian market was open to us before too, and we too the use of it. Now, it is open again with EaEU. The sense of an open thing to open again… It is possible to be integrated to the whole, but when you’re not ready, you would not benefit. We need to be prepared inside, develop agriculture, industry and reduce import. We need to be ready for the external market. If we are not ready, it is absolutely not necessary.”
We clarified saying that in other words, according to him, the EaEU would give nothing to us and is nothing formal, he said. “Maybe there was a matter of security.”
To our question of whether there was no political decision in the PAP faction for their party members to vote for accession to the EaEU in line with the opinions expressed by the faction, Lyova Khachatryan replied, “No, there was no such a political decision.”
H. JEBEJYAN