The Washington Post
 Tuesday


A blow to the Putin model


SERZH SARGSYAN, who ruled Armenia as president from 2008 until this
month, was a faithful client of Vladimir Putin. In 2013, after meeting
with the Russian president, he abruptly dropped negotiations with the
European Union and instead joined Moscow-led economic and security
organizations. During a visit to Washington a couple of years later,
he frankly told us that his small Caucasian country of roughly 3
million people had little choice, since Armenians working in Russia
supplied one-fifth of the country's gross domestic product and Russian
companies monopolized its energy supplies. "Armenian cognac can't
really be sold in Paris," he explained.

Mr. Sargsyan underestimated his own citizens, however, when he
attempted to emulate a classic Putin maneuver. Limited by the
constitution to two terms as president, he pushed through a
constitutional amendment transferring most executive powers to the
prime minister, and then - having denied for years that he would do so
- had the parliament name him to that post. The result was 11 days of
mounting mass demonstrations that, on Monday, prompted Mr. Sargsyan to
give up the position. "I was wrong," he said in a statement.

It's not clear whether Mr. Sargsyan's departure will prompt a genuine
change in Armenia's government or its servile stance toward the
Kremlin. Thanks to manipulated elections, the ruling party has a
commanding majority in parliament, while the leader of last week's
protests, veteran dissident Nikol Pashinyan, controls just nine of 105
seats. The popular revolt nevertheless is a blow to the authoritarian
political model promoted by Mr. Putin, which has spread not only to
other former Soviet Bloc states in Russia's orbit but also to Turkey,
where ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan is hoping to complete the transition
from prime minister to all-powerful president in June.

No doubt Mr. Putin will misunderstand the rebuff. Consumed by
cynicism, the Russian ruler and his clique are incapable of accepting
that spontaneous political uprisings by outraged publics are possible.
They assume that they must be, like Russia's own interventions in
Western democratic elections, the result of state-directed
conspiracies. Mr. Putin blamed the CIA and other intelligence agencies
for the revolts that overturned pro-Moscow governments in Ukraine and
Georgia, and when thousands of Russians protested election fraud and
his own shuttle from prime minister to president in 2012, he held
Hillary Clinton personally responsible.

In truth, it's safe to say that the Trump administration had nothing
to do with events in Armenia. The only U.S. response to the
demonstrations was a weak statement from the embassy in Yerevan asking
the government for "restraint" while calling on the protesters to
"prevent an escalation of tensions." What drove Armenians to the
streets was not foreign provocations but the fact that Mr. Sargsyan's
bet on Russia failed to deliver. During his decade in office, the
economy stagnated. About 10 percent of the population abandoned the
country, while 30 percent of those who remained fall below the
official poverty line.

Mr. Putin can be expected to squeeze whoever succeeds Mr. Sargsyan as
prime minister; in addition to its economic levers, Russia maintains a
military base in the country. That, however, won't improve the lives
of Armenians. More likely it will increase their resistance to the
thuggish, corruption-ridden and economically failed model that is
Putinism.