President of the “Modus Vivendi” center, political scientist Ara Papian says that internal issues in Armenia should not be discussed during the upcoming meetings in Moscow. “That is a question of self-government. Whether it be something that happened 10 to 20 years ago, it’s up to us to decide if there’s a time limit for criminal liability. People won’t be held responsible for that. They’ll either face moral or criminal consequences. I don’t understand what the purpose of such interference is. It’s putting obvious pressure on Armenia. I also don’t understand the interest. I wonder if they think in Moscow that there will be things uncovered that will hurt them.”
Lavrov’s support of Kocharyan isn’t dangerous according to Papian, but it is unacceptable. “It’s illogical from the Armenian-Russian relations perspective. It will harm Armenian-Russian relations. It’s not a secret that at least 70-80 percent of Armenians don’t like Kocharyan. Thus, I don’t understand why anyone would potentially harm international relationships just for one individual. It’s not about Kocharyan, but instead it’s fear that Russians don’t want anything to be uncovered. Otherwise, Russians don’t care about Kocharyan’s fate.”
Ara Papian also spoke about whether or not there truly are problems in Armenian-Russian relations currently. “I don’t think that the current authorities have problems with Russia, but Moscow does have problems with our new authorities. Moscow considers the fight against corruption and crime to be a fight against them. This is the problem Moscow has with our authorities. Armenia hasn’t done anything wrong. For example, the Russian military base still stands, Russian border troops continue to guard our border, we aren’t going to participate in the military trainings in Georgia. So, we haven’t done anything against Russians, but they’re the ones who feel that way, and thus they keep trying to find reasons behind it.”
Mariam Grigoryan
Zhamanak