“Is much going to change? Are we going to die now or in a year? Maybe not so much. Will a lot change? There will be no Armenia in five years or five months? I don’t think much changes. Yes, a generation will live, but that is a short part of a person’s life. Suppose we remain stupid like this, from the cleaner to the country’s leaders, the prime minister, the President. In that case, it will be a matter of months or years; the destruction will be inevitable if we do not change our stupid, lazy behavior and start working for the common good,” in a conversation with Aravot. Vova Vartanov, the Founder of the ” Art of Staying Alive” Organization, referred to the discussions on whether the enemy, having solved the Artsakh issue, will continue to solve the RA issue in the form of the “Zangezur Corridor.”
According to our interlocutor, in the situation created in Artsakh and Armenia, the RA authorities should have taken the actions they had prepared in the last three years. “What we have is that during the last years, the military reforms have been very slow; the society is more divided, filled with conflicting statements and hatred.” For Vartanov, it needs to be clarified why the Russian leadership emphasizes what they could have done in the matter of Artsakh if the RA leadership had recognized Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan. “A few years ago, Russian leaders got tired of repeating that Artsakh is a part of Azerbaijan. Suppose, with our heads down, the government subordinate to the more important just repeated the words of the boy leader. Well, let’s say he invented that thesis under pressure, as a result of cowardice, but the decree of the Russian President, ratified in the State Duma, that not peacekeepers are sent to Artsakh, but Armed Forces to protect civilians, how did that happen? You don’t like something in someone, and you violate the order and decision of the Duma? In short, it was a reason, an ape that did not suit the great country.
Do they want our population not to deviate too much to the West? It was so easy. The armed forces of the 102nd military base should have been raised and sent to help the forces that, by the decision of the Russian President and the State Duma, came to Artsakh to protect the civilian population. If the 102nd military base came and moved, I can assure you that the RA Armed Forces would fight equally. No one wants to do extra work; everyone wants to pull the chestnuts out of the fire with someone else’s hands, including the Armenians, the Armenian soldier, the Armenian mother, and the Russian propagandist, but the existential danger hangs over our heads. I mean, massacred, they will erase us; you must do something if you don’t want to be erased․. You don’t care what the Russian said, what Macron said, you do your job.”
Arpine SIMONYAN
