Armenian
News Network / Groong
Guest
Hosts
Introduction
Hello,
and welcome to the Armenian News Network, Groong,
Week in Review. This show was recorded on Tuesday, February 8, 2022.
This week we’re
going to talk about the following major topics:
● The Continuing Crisis in Ukraine
● Civil Contract Nominates Vahagn Khachatryan for
President
● New IRI Poll Results
To talk about
these issues, we have with us:
Dr. Pietro Shakarian, who is a Lecturer in History at the
American University of Armenia in Yerevan. His research focuses on the history
of Soviet Armenia and the Caucasus.
Topics This Week
The Continuing Ukraine Crisis
A Game of Chicken Kiev?
First last week,
the top story is once again (you guessed it!) Ukraine. In the latest episode there are widespread
reports in the American and British press of an imminent Russian invasion of
Ukraine. Bloomberg News posted an alarming headline on Friday at 4 PM (US Eastern time), stating
that Russia had in fact actually invaded Ukraine. After remaining on the Bloomberg website for
about a half-hour, the news agency removed the “report” and apologized for the
“error.” On the part of Moscow, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s First Deputy
Permanent Representative to the UN, referred to the “invasion” rhetoric in the
US and UK media as “madness and scaremongering.”
Meanwhile,
Ukraine has stressed it also wants to dial down the rhetoric, with President
Zelensky personally telling President Biden to take a chill pill and “tone down” the talk of a potential “Russian invasion” of
Ukraine. “I’m the President of Ukraine, I’m based here [in Kiev], and I think I
know the details deeper than any other President,” Zelensky said.
Meanwhile, the US
and NATO responses to Russia’s calls for an end to NATO expansion were leaked to the media this past
week.
Pietro: Where is continental Europe on this issue? Where do you see this
situation heading? Is this all a big game of chicken (kiev), or will cooler
heads prevail?
Putin in Beijing
If you watched
the Winter Olympic opening ceremonies in China, you saw a smiling Vladimir
Putin in attendance. Meanwhile the US and many western countries sent their
athletes to the games, but have not sent any government officials as a
“diplomatic boycott” of the games.
While in China,
Putin has inked $117 billion in energy deals between Russia and China.
The economic
deals between Moscow and Beijing are already very significant. But what do they
mean in political terms?
● The gas will be priced in Euros, not Dollars.
Beijing has
stressed that it fully supports Moscow’s position on Ukraine and its opposition
to NATO expansion, while India abstained from voting against Russia. In
addition, India has indicated that it is leaning toward Moscow on the Ukraine issue. What do these
latest moves indicate?
Olympic diplomacy?
Apparently no
Armenian officials are at the Olympic games.
According to Suren Sargsyan, this puts Armenia in the “Western” camp by
effectively joining the diplomatic boycott.
These are the
winter Olympics, are we reading too much into this, or is this actually something
that Russia will note?
Erdogan in Kiev
Meanwhile Turkish
president Erdogan is also not at the Olympics. He was in Ukraine slamming the west for being unable to resolve the Ukraine crisis,
and offered to host a summit of the presidents of Ukraine and Russia.
Erdogan also
signed a free trade deal with Ukraine, and expanded the defense agreement between the two countries to allow Ukraine to
build Turkish drones itself.
Nuanced,
strategic, or double-faced politics? How will Russia see Turkey’s wheeling and
dealing?
The Manchurian Candidate
Civil Contract Nominates a New Candidate for President
Speaking of
presidential wheelings and dealings, let’s go to Armenia.
As President
Armen Sarkissian’s resignation became official Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan
took over as the acting president, while his deputy speaker Hakob Arshakyan
became the interim speaker of the parliament.
As of a few days
ago, the ruling Civil Contract party picked
Pashinyan loyalist Vahagn Khachatryan, who was most recently the minister of
High-Tech Industry, as their candidate to become the next president of Armenia.
Meanwhile the opposition said that they won’t be nominating anyone and will
boycott the vote.
● What is Khachatryan’s track record as minister
of High-Tech?
○ He was Mayor of Yerevan in the
early-to-mid 1990s. What are the main expectations of him by Pashinyan and his
ruling party?
○ Background: Khachatryan used to be a member of
the board at Khachatur Sukiasyan’s bank before this. As Mayor he sold the
building for SIL plaza (Grzo's company) to Grzo for $5655 (it is worth millions
today), and comes with a reputation for corruption.
○
Khachatryan resigned from
Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s ANC party.
● What can a president do, and what can a
Khachatryan presidency accomplish?
● There were some rumors that a more loyal Civil
Contract candidate was rejected by Pashinyan in favor of Khachatryan, who is
frequently thought of as Khachatur Sukiasyan’s loyalist. We know that Pashinyan
had said that he wants someone loyal as the president. Is this a political risk
for him?
● Some argue that the opposition is being negative
and could play a more positive role by attempting to nominate someone, even if
there’s no chance that the nominee would pass. Is the opposition’s boycott the
best strategy?
● Yet again, the ministry of High Tech Industry remains
rudderless. Khachatryan is the third minister in 10 months.
○ Khachatryan was already under attack as being
“unqualified” for the position before.
○ What kind of messaging can this send to the
public?
New IRI Poll Results
This week a new
International Republican Institute (IRI)
report came out based on data collected between the
end of November and early December. Varuzhan Geghamyan, who is a regular guest on this podcast, did an
in-depth analysis of the results on Twitter.
Let’s go over
some of the main points.
First, who is the
IRI?
Country Direction
Only 34% believe
the country is going in the right direction, down from 41% in July 2021.
Security Threats
Overwhelming
majority see Turkey and Azerbaijan (88% and 81%) as the top security threats to
Armenia.
Improving Relations
Only 5% and 4%
respectively think that relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan need to be
improved. The list of countries with which relations should be improved is
topped by Russia, USA, Iran, France, and China (in that order).
Dialogue with Turkey
A vast majority
>70% respectively said that Armenia should establish relations with Turkey
while simultaneously pursuing international recognition of the Armenian
Genocide (73%) or even putting forth its own preconditions (70%).
We also note that
the IRI poll does not ask questions about balancing dialogue with Turkey vs
pre-conditions.
Satisfaction
with the PM Office
Polls continue to
indicate that Pashinyan has the most support from the higher age groups, those
in the regions, and those who are most poor.
However, the
results from the previous slides show a logical outcome in the results of the
dissatisfaction with the PM Office: with the greater agreement that the country
is going in the wrong direction; and the extreme consolidation of opinion that
Turkey and Azerbaijan are the greatest threats - while Armenia is attempting
unconditional dialogue with them; and with majority agreement that relations
with Armenia’s strategic partner Russia need to be improved, indicating that
they are at an unsatisfactory level at present; we see that people’s
disapproval of the government leadership has increased.
Topics from the Panelists
1. Pietro
- Eye sore in the center of
Yerevan
2. Hovik
- New proposed law in Artsakh on occupied territories
Wrap-up
That
was our Week in Review show, and we hope it helped you catch up with
some of the issues in and around Armenia from this past week. As always, we
invite your feedback and your suggestions. You can find us on most social media
and podcast platforms, or our website Groong.org.
Thanks
to Laura Osborn for the music on our podcasts. Don’t forget to subscribe to our
channel on YouTube, Like our pages
and follow us on social media. On behalf of everyone in this episode, we wish
you a good week, thanks for listening and we’ll talk to you next week.
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Keywords
Pietro Shakarian,
Armenia, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, IRI Polls, International Republican
Institute, National Democratic Institute, Ukraine Crisis, Winter Olympics,
Olympics 2022, China, Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, Recep
Erdogan, Nikol Pashinyan, Energy Deals, Defense Agreement, Yerevan, Nor
Yerevan, Artsakh, Nagorno Karabakh,