Russia is an empire. Despite the fact that attempts were made in the 1990s to turn it into a “regular country,” they were futile (the empire lost over half of its territory in the 1990s as well, but it still remained an empire). As for those who only associate the word “empire” with something negative, I must say that I believe the United States is an empire as well. This is due to the fact that one of the main goals of the US is to establish a system of democracy and human rights all over the world- rights that are not accepted by all nations. Vladimir Putin is the emperor and the tsar- variants of the same word. Words such as “president,” “elections,” “constitution,” and “parliament” are simply external veils that are used to lightly “decorate” the essence of that country’s state system. People who live there are not essentially Russian citizens, but subjects of an empire, and I do not see anything either good or bad in that. Subjects of an empire can be ethnically Russian, Armenian, Jewish, Georgian, Chechen, and more. The pragmatic approach to this is that the Armenian authorities and their allies should not discuss or critique whether or not Russia is an empire, but accept it as a fact. Based on that, we will need to find mutual interests between an empire and a sovereign state (I believe that the arena for cooperation here is large) and use the abilities and connections of the Armenian subjects to benefit our state.
Read the entire editorial in Armenian: https://www.aravot.am/2020/07/21/1124802/
Aram Abrahamyan
