“Hello, Vladimir Putin. Congratulations on the May holidays. Our nations fought against fascism together and they won. But I want to talk about the closing of the OSCE office of Armenia,”- this is the text that a political scientist Stepan Grigoryan suggestes for the conversation between presidents of Armenia and Russia. “Putin will answer what the ambassador of Russia in Armenia said: they have a veto and so on. Serzh Sargsyan has to tell Vladimir Putin that there is no need to be offended. We have turned to other countries to protect us from that step of Azerbaijan, but they said that we always vote for Russia in international organizations, so turn to Russia. Don’t be offended, but we cannot help you with Crimea and Syria anymore. I’m sorry, we are strategic partners, but this is the situation”,- the political scientist continued when talking to Aravot.am about the closing of the OSCE office of Armenia.
“You’ll see that Putin will turn to Azerbaijan, and he’ll ask Lavrov: “What did you do to these people, that they are telling such things to us. How can you not affect Azerbaijan?” Thinks the political scientist and then adds that there are 2 important countries in OSCE- the USA and Russia. “It’s good that the USA has expressed their regret, and if Russia tells Azerbaijan to step back, and that they are also causing problems for NKR, they can’t not obey.” By the way, according to the political scientist, in the Serzh Sargsyan- Vladimir Putin phone call, the president of Armenia should also warn the president of the Russian Federation that they shouldn’t tell us to meet with Azerbaijan. “The Russian Federation is one of the most serious countries, they will do their conclusions,”- reassures Stepan Grigoryan. In general, all the actions such as the closing of the OSCE office of Armenia, the case of Permyakov and so on, the political scientist views in the context of the problem of Artsakh: “Azerbaijan does everything he can in different platforms against Armenia, be it on the battlefield, in diplomacy or political-social sphere.
They do that very carefully. The step of the closing of the OSCE office of Armenia is also anti-constructive and hostile against OSCE itself, but they do that according to their interests.
This sadly is not going to be their only move: we will hear about such thing soon. This is done for the international blockade of Armenia because the closing of such offices means there will be less international relations and money to carry out programs. Our interlocutor notes that the “Platform of Peace” that gained good response in the circle of the international community and which was organized by Azerbaijan, was also a serious front. The second front was the blacklist of the people of Artsakh. According to him, we do not give importance to it either in political, nor in social platforms, but in reality, it’s quite serious. The example of Lapshin is the best proof for it. It should be mentioned, that the chaos of the closing of the OSCE office of Armenia exists for already 4 and a half months. The political scientist questions why neither of our two delegates of OSCE parliamentary assembly said anything about this on any platform.
“Yes, Azerbaijan formally has a veto, but even now we can raise the question to create a political atmosphere and to say the position of Azerbaijan is anti-constructive. OSCE is made up of 57 countries, is not there a small country that can protect us and condemn Azerbaijan. There were countries that expressed their regret, but why couldn’t our Ministry of Foreign Affairs find supporters in 4 and half months. There are a lot of countries that support the reformations inside the OSCE, so we should have put that problem in that context,” said the political scientist.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
