“After the bitter defeat in the 44-Day War, perhaps for the first time we started to think about how fragile peace and the illusion of stability we have are, and how our small nation faces strong external threats and internal challenges,” the head of the Integration and Development Analytical Center NGO and political analyst Aram Safaryan said.
During the ‘Independence and Self-Government: Threats and Challenges to Modern-Day Armenia’ conference organized by the Integration and Development Analytical Center, the Eurasian Expert Club, and the Armenian-Russian University, Aram Safaryan said that the specialists at the Eurasian Expert Club agree that the best way to strengthen our independent statehood and establish stability is to be more actively and constructively involved in the Russian-led Eurasian integration processes. “The internal political consensus reached in Armenia on this issue a few years ago should not be repeated with various ups and downs like mantras, but it should have a government consisting of capable and competent leaders who will finally convince society, political elites, and the scientific community through its actions that it is capable of making the most out of the different manifestations of the integration processes in the Eurasian space.”
Regarding the internal political situation, the speaker said that Russia, which is in a global confrontation with the West, does not want to clash with Turkey and the Turkic world. “On the contrary, Russia is trying to make the most out of the manageable combination of these parallel integration processes. The Armenian people have never benefited from clashes between Russia and Turkey, and it is stupid, at the very least, to find some sort of benefit in potential clashes between Russia and Turkey. By learning from the bitter lessons of history, we must give a constructive spiritual content to the development of the Armenian-Russian strategic alliance because only Russia’s growing political, economic, and cultural-humanitarian presence in our country will allow us to minimize the consequences of the expected Turkish-Azerbaijani economic and then political expansion. Our supporters of European integration should know that by and large, the choice is not between Russia and Europe, but between Russia and the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem.”
Nelly Grigoryan
