Referring to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s statements in the interview to Russian “Rossia 1” TV channel that if Russia refuses to selling weapons to Azerbaijan, then they will buy it from other countries, the member of “Free Democrats” party, Anush Sedrakyan, says that the arms sales primarily is an economic factor. In an interview with Aravot.am, Ms. Sedrakyan noted the military equipment is the only exporting product for Russia, which brings tremendous benefits as the purchasing power of oil and gas has dropped, “Russia should consume its arms in this region when it finds a buyer.”
As Sedrakyan presented, now Russia’s economy, one can say, is in the stage of collapse, an international prestigious economic magazine also cited this that people compare Russia’s economy with the 90-ies, hence, Russia had to find a buyer for the weapons, “The fact that Russia’s economy is collapsing, it is obvious. 3 days ago, there was an analysis in a magazine that the revenues of the population in Russia have declined as well as the gross domestic product. It is not surprising that Putin has created a special national guard to protect his own person because he expects that the deterioration of the situation may lead to disorders. Therefore, Russia cannot ignore the economic factor in the sale of weapons.
It’s another matter that politically Russia is convinced for having allies in the corrupt political elite of Armenia who are ready to put the state in support of Russia’s interests. They see it step-by-step: a property for debt, a gas agreement and so on, that the RA authorities are silently following the Russian politics.” But when the situation reached the state of war, as Sedrakyan said, when the issue of Karabakh and our soldiers was put at stake, it was unexpected for Russia that Armenia would be such unanimous and reaction at the same time, “Therefore, it is necessary to continue smearing the sale of these weapons, though it’s fruitless as we see that the pro-Russian reaction in Armenia is silent, they are convinced that the weapon is not a regular product by the political federal agreement, weapon is a political permit by the sale of which you sponsor the country that uses this weapon. It would be ridiculous to think that you can sell weapon by one hand and rebuke the same country whom you have sold the weapon or restrict its actions.” According to Sedrakyan, from the outset when this issue was periodically raised during the sale of the weapon, such developments were expected as the weapon is a part of a political trade, the permit of weapons is an internal agreement of political trade, “It is the so-called silent agreement of ally’s destruction. The Russians do not even hide the fact that they knew the information that there is a movement of Azerbaijani military equipment. And in this case, we have not even fulfilled the federal commitments. Here, we can speak of a complete neglecting and failure to fulfil all federal commitment towards Armenia.”
According to Sedrakyan, the same incident that took place in Crimea and with which they were threatening us happened to Armenia, “We remembered that during the EU Association Agreement and the gas price hike, we were told that we are doing all this because otherwise our security would not be protected. While, the reality proved that the security is moreover not protected.” Referring to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s statement that Russia is a party to the conflict, Medvedev said, “Instead of making calls to calm down, Erdoğan delivered a trenchant assessment of the situation. For what? To add insult to injury?”
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What does Medvedev’s such a response that contains no counterargument speaks of, in response to our question, Sedrakyan said, “But Armenia has already shown that Russia is not a full partner, in other words, it is the partner that can be ignored, neglected, otherwise, they would at least bring some convincing arguments, even though they do not exist too.” The vice-president of “Free Democrats” party said that he had looked for any Israel-Azerbaijan state document in the military state agreements of Israel but has not found, “Because the private companies have sold, this is my assumption. But what prevents Armenia in the event of disposing of the money and resources freely to buy more sophisticated and accurate weapons from the country that supplies? After all, the Russian weapon hit the economy of Armenia because their quality is also questionable and it is also mentioned by Serzh Sargsyan that we have weapons produced in the 80-ies. If we had entered the free market, may by we would have greater opportunities. Now, we turn to the international community, whether we have guarantees to apply when we have failed to fulfill our federal commitments, we unilaterally suspended the EU Association Agreement. Now, we cannot demand the similar response because we are not perceived as a part of the European family. This is due to our policy. We have lost the chances for investments, which, let’s say, Georgia has, we have lost the scopes of humanitarian aid, which Ukraine has. We are in the same war situation as Ukraine but we cannot expect help from anywhere.”
Nelly BABAYAN
