Turan Information Agency, Azerbaijani Opposition Media
Friday
Armenia's "Velvet Revolution" keeps peace with Russia - for now
The leaders of the protest movement that toppled Armenia's longtime
leader Serzh Sargsyan have studiously - and so far successfully -
avoided making their call for a "velvet revolution" about Armenia's
foreign relations.
But not far under the surface of the protest movement lie strongly
skeptical attitudes of the country's tight relationship with Russia.
And if, as seems increasingly likely, a fundamental change in
Armenia's politics is underway, the country's relationship to Russia
will come under pressure.
Russia is Armenia's closest ally and security guarantor, maintaining a
large military base in Armenia and providing substantial military aid.
Armenia is a member of Russia's two most significant regional
organizations, the security-oriented Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) and the trade bloc Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).
Russian border guards man the country's frontier with Turkey.
Moscow tends to hold a dim view of popular revolts in its post-Soviet
allies, regularly warning of the danger of so-called "color
revolutions" such as those seen in Georgia and Ukraine. And it
generally saw Sargsyan as a reliable, if not enthusiastic, steward of
Russian-Armenian ties.
Nevertheless, the Kremlin has maintained a hands-off attitude toward
events in Yerevan.
"For now we see that the situation is not unfolding in a destabilizing
way which is a cause for satisfaction," Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry
Peskov told reporters the day after Sargsyan stepped down.
The leader of the anti-Sargsyan movement, Nikol Pashinyan, carefully
avoided voicing any international agenda during the protests. And when
Sargsyan stepped down, Pashinyan took pains to announce that he did
not foresee any significant changes to Armenia's relationship with
Russia. He has said that he supports staying in the CSTO and EAEU and
keeping the Russian military base.
Pashinyan and other leaders of the movement met Russian officials at
their embassy in Yerevan on the evening of April 25, and Russia
appeared to give its tacit approval. "I met with official
representatives from Moscow, who assured me of Russia's
noninterference in Armenia's internal affairs," Pashinyan told a rally
the same evening.
In the past, however, Pashinyan and other protest leaders have taken
more Russia-skeptical positions. The Yelk bloc in parliament, to which
many of the leaders including Pashinyan belong, submitted a proposal
last year to leave the EAEU. Pashinyan has also expressed skepticism
about the CSTO's value to Armenia.
At a press conference on April 24, the day after Sargsyan resigned,
Pashinyan alluded to the possibility of geopolitical shifts in the
future. "We're not going to make any sharp geopolitical movements.
We're going to do everything in the interests of Armenia. Any question
has to be discussed in its own time," he said.
At the protests, many of the participants, unprompted, criticized
Sargsyan's close ties to Moscow and expressed hope that a change in
government would lead to a less pro-Russia orientation.
"You're not from Russia, are you?" one protester asked angrily when
approached by a reporter during one of the low moments of the
movement, shortly after Pashinyan had been arrested. "Good. All of
this is Russia's fault."
After Sargsyan stepped down, another protester - asked what his hopes
for the country were now - put foreign relations close to the top of
list: "We hope that the politics won't be only pro-Russia, that they
will be more balanced."
And even as Moscow has stayed relatively sanguine about the events
unfolding in Armenia, many pro-Kremlin commentators have been framing
the developments as a potentially dangerous color revolution. The
protest leaders "are committed to the West," said analyst Nikolai
Spiridonov in an interview with the Russian news agency RIA Novosti's
Ukrainian service. "We can assume that if one of them becomes
president or prime minister, under the new system, then the balance of
power in the country will change in favor of the West."
One Russian meme has the Kremlin's attack dog TV anchor Dmitry
Kiselyov asking Russian President Vladimir Putin: "I don't understand
- are the Armenians now Banderovtsy, or not yet?" ("Banderovtsy" is a
Russian derogatory term for Ukrainian nationalists and a key trope in
Russia's information war against Ukraine's 2014 "Maidan" revolution
that brought in a pro-Western leadership.)
"Pashinyan wants a pro-Western political course," said Anton
Evstratov, a Russian commentator and history professor in Yerevan. But
there are deep security and economic ties that bind Armenia to Russia,
which will make it difficult for him to implement any sort of
pro-Western agenda, Evstratov said. "The question is, is he able to
put his pro-Western views into reality?"
He said that Russian officials' low-key reaction also is the result of
a belated understanding that the Kremlin's heavy-handed approach
backfired. Evstratov said he was "surprised" by the "soft" reactions
from Russian officials like Peskov, but said that they appeared to
have learned from their mistakes in Georgia (during the Rose
Revolution of 2003) and Ukraine (during the Maidan revolution of
2013-14), when the heavy-handed Russian reaction exacerbated events
and largely turned the two countries against Russia. "They [Russians]
are doing it much more professionally now."
Pashinyan and his colleagues could be compared to "Euroskeptics who
come into parliament on a nationalistic movement, but when they are in
power they become far more moderate and able to negotiate," said Yuri
Kofner, head of the Eurasian sector of the Centre for Comprehensive
European and International Studies at Moscow's Higher School of
Economics, and an advocate of greater Eurasian integration. "I think
the situation can be similar here."
Styopa Safaryan, a former member of Armenia"s parliament who advocates
closer ties with the West, said Russia is likely reassured by
Pashinyan's relatively balanced foreign policy orientation. Pashinyan
did advocate leaving the EAEU, "however, he also was not supporting
Armenia's full European and Euro-Atlantic integration," Safaryan told
Eurasianet. "Pashinyan will not change Armenia's foreign policy agenda
and there is nothing to threaten Russia and Russian interests."
He added, though, that free and fair elections - one of Pashinyan's
major demands - could help more openly pro-Western parties gain a
foothold in the country.
Joshua Kucera is the Turkey/Caucasus editor at Eurasianet, and author
of The Bug Pit.