Author: Andranik Taslakhchian

We need to talk about Armenia.

It’s another country forced into Russia’s sphere of influence where the majority of citizens want out and into the West’s embrace. They need America’s help.

If we don’t provide it, the country may be locked into Russia’s grip for good. While the Kremlin is distracted and overstretched in Ukraine, the time to act is now.

Today in Armenia there is a fight between pro-Russian and pro-Western forces. Who prevails will decide the future of a place from where over one and a half million Americans claim descent. America can help tilt the balance.

From parliament to the streets, this battle of words and fists over the future direction of the country has intensified since the nation’s 2020 defeat to neighbor Azerbaijan over control of the lands of Karabakh — a reversal of Armenia’s victory 30 years ago in a war over the same territory, despite being internationally recognised as Azerbaijan.

Does Armenia now make a peace deal with Azerbaijan, opening a path to economic recovery away from Russia with the support of her richer neighbor? Or does the opposition’s extremist position prevail, with no deal locking her out of the region and into Russia’s embrace?

In what is starting to smell like a Kremlin-sponsored, slow-motion coup masquerading as a protest movement, the opposition appears to be gaining the upper hand. A five-point peace plan proposed by the Azerbaijanis has been accepted in principle by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. That, or indeed any concession, is totally rejected by the leader of the opposition, and former president, Robert Kocharyan. The irony is he seems happy to prostrate his country before Kremlin domination, even proposing his country merge with Russia. Fighting in parliament, parading in the streets, the semi-militarized opposition is forcing the government, violently, away from a future settlement.

Undeniably, peace with Azerbaijan is in the long-term interests of Armenia. The country’s economy is in ruins and various land and border disputes render trade with any of its neighbors bar Iran impossible. Peace with its oil-and-gas-rich neighbor Azerbaijan is a clear solution to Armenia’s economic quagmire: but that can’t happen until an agreement on Karabakh is reached. However, while “conflict” with Azerbaijan continues, Armenia remains economically dependent on Russia and must house Russian “peace-keeping” forces within its borders, projecting and protecting the Kremlin’s influence in the region.

It doesn’t have to be this way. As a Lithuanian American I understand the immense tug-of-war that is required to free your country from under Russia’s control. It took a decades-long campaign with congressional funding led by the Lithuanian American diaspora to support first the independence of Lithuania from the Soviet Union. Then, for two decades, interference from a revanchist Russia in the country’s internal political affairs had to be quashed.

In the 1980s and early ‘90s, support and funds were piled into the pro-Western “Sajudis” movement. No truck was given to any politician who even suggested accommodation with Russia. It was freedom or nothing.

But that’s not what’s happening in Armenia. Over the last two decades, American taxpayer’s money has sloshed into the country regardless of leadership. In the wake of Crimea, as the pro-Russian leadership drew Moscow and Yerevan ever closer together, the U.S. government continued writing checks for Armenian development. More recently and shockingly, Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff have been asking Congress for funding to the tune of $50 million for the pro-Russian pseudo-Armenian government of Karabakh. That this government hailed Russian recognition and enforced “independence” of the Ukrainian territories of Luhansk and Donetsk only weeks before seemed unproblematic to him.

America must instead act with clarity today in Armenia, just like we did when the U.S, support ended Soviet control over Lithuania. Those Armenian leaders, like Pashinyan, who back the West and long-term peace and economic prosperity with their neighbors deserve iron-clad support. Those siding with Putin and his megalomaniac visions of a Tsarist empire 2.0 must be decisively rejected. There can be no middle ground.

To see how it might play out in practice, you don’t need to look far. Neighboring Azerbaijan has already been down this path with the support of the British. Energy major BP signed the “Contract of the Century” with the country in the early 1990s, with the pipelines today supplying gas to Europe as it diversifies away from Russian dependency. Azerbaijan’s economic transformation gave it the self-assurance to quit Russia’s Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) military alliance and join NATO’s Partnership for Peace. They rejected the pressure to join the EAEU, Russia’s economic club.

Armenia, on the other hand, is today trapped in both. Tragically, Pashinyan currently holds the chairmanship of CSTO at the very time Russia invades Ukraine. At the beginning of this year and at the Kremlin’s behest, he was forced to order the alliance’s troops — including Armenians — into Kazakhstan, another former Soviet state trapped under the Kremlin’s thumb of  influence to put down democratic demonstrations in the country that threatened Russia’s interests.

Pashinyan surely knows these alliances hobble the hopes most Armenians have for their nation’s future. As he tries to wrestle his country free, the U.S. must ensure he has the help he needs, while not inadvertently supporting those that oppose Armenia’s liberation.

Saul Anuzis is a Lithuanian-American who campaigned in Washington for U.S. support for Lithuania’s pro-West “Sajudis” independence movement in the 1980s and ‘90s. He is a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, and today president of the 60 Plus Association, the American Association of Senior Citizens.