FALLOUT: GYUMRI FAMILY MASSACRE RAISES QUESTIONS OVER RUSSIAN MILITARY BASE
Analysis | 14.01.15 | 11:01
By Naira Hayrumyan
ArmeniaNow correspondent
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One day after the French unity march in Paris held in solidarity
with the victims of Islamist terror attacks, including the editors
and staffers of the satirical magazine, Charlie Ebdo, Armenia saw a
shocking mass murder of a large family in its second largest city of
Gyumri. Six members of the Avetisyan family were shot dead. The only
survivor of what looked like a shooting rampage was a six-month-old
baby. The suspect is Valeri Permyakov, a soldier of the 102nd Russian
military base stationed in Gyumri. He has already confessed to
the crime.
The brutal multiple murders caused a shock in Armenia. At the same
time, many have questioned the role of the Russian military base
in ensuring Armenia’s security. Some have argued that its presence
on Armenian soil only raises the level of threats. This question has
popped up in social media debates as well as in private conversations,
but it has never made to the political level.
Almost all officials, politicians and public figures, including Defense
Minister Seyran Ohanyan, have spoken against politicizing the issue
not to spoil the Russian-Armenian relations, especially that the
crime may have been committed by a man with mental health issues,
as some say, and ethnicity would not matter in this case.
There has been no increase in anti-Russian sentiments in Armenia,
but this latest incident has also evoked the memories of other tragic
events that took place because of what appeared to be negligence
at the Russian military base in Gyumri. For example, in 1999 two
drunken Russian officers opened random gunfire at the city market,
killing two and wounding dozens of innocent citizens. And in 2013,
two boys were blown up by explosive devices that had carelessly been
left by the Russians on the firing ground.
The Russian base in Armenia was established in 1995, a year after a
Russian-mediated ceasefire agreement was signed in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In Armenia, it is regarded as a deterrent on the border with Turkey,
with which Armenia has a troubled past and no diplomatic relations
at present. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Shoigu says that the
Russian military bases are there “to ensure the security of the CIS
countries.” There is also an opinion that the Russian base is a kind
of guarantor that Russia will not take hostile actions against Armenia.
Now Russia has only four military bases abroad – in Armenia, Belarus,
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In 2006, the Russian bases were withdrawn
from Georgia, and a year after that a war in South Ossetia started. In
2012, the Russian military base was withdrawn from Uzbekistan and in
2013 Russia withdrew from the Gabala radar station in Azerbaijan. In
order to keep its Black Sea fleet in Ukraine, after the change of
government in Kyiv in February 2014, Moscow, in fact, established its
military present in the Crimea, where an internationally unrecognized
referendum was held in March to support the peninsula’s unification
with Russia.
Originally the lease agreement for the base in Armenia was to end
in 2020, but in 2010 then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrived
in Yerevan and signed an agreement on extending the lease term until
2044. Then some experts wrote that Armenia had intended to refuse to
prolong the term of the agreement in 2020 and Russia decided not to
wait until then and take measures in advance.
While there are some calls for the withdrawal of the Russian military
base from Armenia made through social media (a corresponding Facebook
group has been created), many are wary of such calls, recalling
the events in Georgia and Ukraine, where Russia, according to many
experts, has acted under the threat of losing its military presence,
which resulted in territorial losses in both former Soviet countries.
Armenia is unlikely to withstand such pressure, having two hostile
neighbors like Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Furthermore, Armenia even officially pays the utilities and other
expenses of the Russian military base that it hosts. For example,
only at the end of 2014, 20 billion drams (approx. $42 million) were
allocated from the state budget of Armenia for covering expenses
related to the Russian military presence in Armenia.