How do you picture the security of Armenia, if tomorrow Russia leaves Armenia? Can you assess the benefits of the Russian military presence in Armenia? One of the Facebook users asked such a question to head of the “Yelq” faction Nikol Pashinyan.
He answered live on the social network: “We do not say that Russia will remove its military base tomorrow, we say what will happen to Armenia if Russia decides to leave this region one day. There have been such situations in history. We say that we should not be so dependent on a single point of security, today we need balance. I do not say that tomorrow Russia will decide to leave, but there may be situations that they will have to, geopolitical conjuncture will change. Armenia should be the only guarantor of its security; the other factors can change and the interests may also change”.
Pashinyan said this problem is getting tougher in the context of the April war: “It is obvious to me that Azerbaijan could not start that war without Russia’s consent. There are concrete facts to insist on this: what happened in the 2008 Georgian-Ossetian war, Georgia decided to seize South Ossetia, Russia intervened, Russian troops reached Tbilisi’s suburbs. So, after that, would the Azerbaijani leadership dare to do such actions without the consent of the Russian Federation? During the April war, Russia declared that it would continue to supply weapons to Azerbaijan, this was a direct support and these situations should make us think about our security environment”. He said that no country should be able to determine that Armenia should no longer exist, or that the Artsakh issue should be settled in this or that way.
