Helved and cherished. Why Pashinyan manages to hold positions, despite the pressure of Moscow, Baku and the opposition

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Symbolic maneuvers

The absence of Nikol Pashinyan at the Moscow Victory Parade, Armenian skeptics explained to him to be closer to the house during stormy opposition performances , the peak of which came just on May 9. Even if this was so, then five days later the Armenian Prime Minister answered the skeptics, having gone on a visit to Denmark and trusting to deal with the protest processions for Yerevan to his subordinates.

Meanwhile, May 9 was only a final chord in a series of temptations that Moscow offered its partners. Pashinyan’s irregularity in Putin’s inauguration on May 7, some at first also perceived as a demarche, and his administration’s reference to the lack of an invitation sounded intriguing. However, it quickly became clear that the format of the Moscow ceremony did not imply the mandatory participation of the first persons even the most friendly countries. As for the parade, then, apparently, the Kremlin entered the position of the few remaining partners and also did not insist on anything.

So if you relate to the rituals as a continuation of politics, Yerevan’s actions quite fit into the style of his relationship with Moscow recent times: what looks like a demarche, in fact, intelligence - where the foul is now passing. In addition, the genre also includes Pashinyan's participation in a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, which, despite the chairmanship of Armenia, was transferred to Moscow. Which also fits into a set of characters.

What looks like a demarche, in fact, intelligence is where the foul faces are now taking place

That is, from three events of the Kremlin menu Pashinyan participated in one. But there was a fourth - a meeting with Putin one on one .

And all this - against the background of really unprecedented from the time of the revolution of Pashinyan of protests in Yerevan . Starting on May 9, the inhabitants of Armenia have protested against a deal with Azerbaijan about the delimitation of the border section, according to the conditions of which Yerevan agreed to transfer several abandoned border villages under the control of Baku. Protesters also require Pashinyan's resignation.

In such cases, it does not do without conspiracyology: the protest, they say, is fed by Moscow, which hopes to use it to overthrow Pashinyan, and it is no coincidence that there are so many supporters of the former president Robert Kocharyan, who does not hide friendship with the Kremlin, among the protesters.

This is true, but not all. In fact, in the Square in the center of Yerevan, where the archbishop, the Primate of the Tavush diocese, Bagrat Bagrat, as joke in Armenia, gathered his supporters, gathered the same people who supported Pashinyan six years ago. And this is the joke in which, perhaps, nothing but the truth

Confrontation at all levels except Putin and Pashinyan

In Moscow, at a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, his current chairman Nikol Pashinyan spoke as if Yerevan was not at all the outrage of the Russian-Armenian calm. He talked about the advantages and problems of Eurasian integration, market mechanisms that need to be finalized (primarily in the energy sector).

In Yerevan, spheres of discussion of problems with Moscow are clearly delimited. Secretary of the Security Council Armen Grigoryan refuses to travel to Moscow to interdepartmental meetings, he is one of the first to formulates all the pain issues in relations with Moscow, in particular, a wish to withdraw Russian border guards from the Zvartnots Airport, says depending on Russia as a strategic error. Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan admits that relations with Moscow are not at the highest point and also refuses to participate in the Council of Foreign Affairs of the CIS. But Pashinyan himself does not participate in this confrontation. The object of his discontent is the CSTO, but the more actively he criticizes him, the more ordinary and softer it looks like the rest in relations with Moscow (from which the stone on the stone does not leave Armenian information resources close to Pashinyan).

The ministers in Armenia criticize Moscow and do not go to meetings, but Pashinyan does not participate in confrontation

But approximately the same picture in Russia. There is a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and personally Maria Zakharova, who does not choose the words too much to assess the actions of Yerevan. But Putin himself in his comments is emphasized as if it makes it clear: everything that comes from his environment, from the ether, which in Yerevan is gradually becoming the next factor in the confrontation, is not related to interstate reality, which is not ideal, but obeys completely different laws.

And Yerevan completely agrees with this style.

The fact that in Moscow, in accordance with this directing, is prescribed by an occasion for dissatisfaction with Armenia, in fact, does not go beyond the designation of its intentions. Despite the fact that these intentions themselves are quite objective, and this is the essence of the conflict. The widely advertised removal of Yerevan from Moscow is rather an attempt to determine the place of the Russian factor in the system of real Armenian priorities, and it is not at all primary in the new reality.

The topic of resentment against Russia is also instrumental that it did not help in confrontation with Baku. Behind this “resentment” is the desire to indicate a real security system that Russia could not ensure and which, of course, will not provide the West. This system involves only one thing: more or less built relations with neighbors, primarily with those, enmity with which is part of the usual value system. At the same time, relations with Russia do not necessarily contradict normal relations with Baku or Ankara, just in history there was no experience of their normal combination - only attempts to balance between them, hoping for Russia, most often imaginary.

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But Pashinyan’s thesis about the incompatibility of historical Armenia with real Armenia, in addition to historiosophical, in many respects, understanding, is extremely relevant for him personally. The world with Azerbaijan, even if the most unpretentious, albeit in many respects established according to the rules of the winner, is not only a guarantee (of course, far from one hundred percent) of Armenia, but also a form of political survival of Pashinyan himself. The person, in many respects because of which the country was in a desperate situation, remained in power, continuing to pay on the bills of defeat, choosing daily between the bad and very bad, and for the persuasiveness the frightening of the people entrusted to him by a very terrible war.

The world with Azerbaijan is a form of political survival of Pashinyan himself

Azerbaijan regularly helps Pashinyan. It is unlikely that the persistence of Armenia in the issue of the transfer of four villages in Tavusha on the border with Azerbaijan was really fraught with a large war. Firstly, Azerbaijan solved all his tasks with the return of Karabakh. Turning from a fighter for sacred territorial integrity into an aggressor is a risk too much for Aliyev, who is talking to the West in rhetoric, which even the Kremlin can be envied. But here is a local exacerbation somewhere in the “gray zone”, on a border in a week-long perseverance-it is quite real. With the most unpredictable political consequences within Armenia.

Such a narrow space of maneuver for Pashinyan is also narrowed by the West. The world most appreciates stability, and only then everything else. And for stability, it is necessary to put pressure on the one who lends itself to this pressure better - that is, the weakest. And it is possible that at meetings with Europeans, as, for example, in the Brussels conversation with Macron and Ursula von der Lyain, Pashinyan had to listen to not only about the prospects for joining the European Union.

The task of four villages

At the same time, even the most adamant opposition in Armenia understand that the four notorious villages, according to the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, who declared the Soviet inter-republican borders interstate, are Azerbaijani. No matter what they recall about the pasture disputes of the 1980s, about mutual seizures of territories during the war in the 1990s-the Alma-Ata declaration today for Armenia is the limit of negotiation expectations.

In Tavush, Baku agreed to the “Alma-Ata” line, but did not agree to make this approach universal. And this is the only specific result of the post -war settlement and, possibly, the first serious example of the fact that objective agreements, in this case, are possible in the mixed commission on delimitation. And by the way, when Yerevan, in connection with the performances of the opposition, had clear difficulties, Baku went towards and agreed to suspend the alarming Tavush process.

Когда у Еревана в связи с выступлениями оппозиции возникли трудности, Баку пошел навстречу

But this is still the same story in which you have to pay every day on old bills. And not only old: after the defeat, the ends meet do not converge, the accounts multiply, interest rises. Today, Pashinyan is recalled that three years ago, speaking in these border villages, he promised that no border would shed here. Therefore, today, as a meme, throughout Armenia, the prime minister’s calls to plant a forest belt in response to the alarms of the villagers that they are under the visual control of the Azerbaijanis.

But in addition to the problems of the prime minister with communication, there are also quite objective factors that prevent local residents, and after them and the displeased Pashinyan residents of the country to come to terms with the transfer of villages to Azerbaijan. During the thirty -year boundless village, the villages of the village were growing, and now several houses of the village of Kiranz are in Azerbaijani territory. Slots of roads will also turn out there - not only local, but also interstate, leading to Georgia.

It is also remembered here that yesterday it was one of the most fortified sections of the front - he now also ceases to exist. But perhaps the most serious reproach that has to listen to the Armenian authorities has to be that Azerbaijan, insisting on justice in the Alma-Ata model, is not in a hurry to return the Armenian villages, which he took the same in the 1990s.

The shadow of the border guard

Now, delimitation can also merit to himself the West - if only because he was successful from the process in accordance with Baku's wish. Azerbaijan generally received the maximum from this situation, expanding the traditional model of equidistance from Russia and from west to format of settlement with Armenia one on one. Armenia actually had no choice - an attempt to appeal to the west of Baku resolutely stopped, but in the end this format was acceptable for Armenia. Azerbaijan, who all these years acted as a situational ally of Moscow, ultimately achieved everything without her help.

Azerbaijan, who always acted as an ally of Moscow, finally achieved everything without her help

Thus, probably, the agenda of the conversation of Putin and Pashinyan was determined.

Both understand that the myth of the ability of Moscow to spoil the life of Armenia is no more tenacious than the myth of strategic allies, and that faith in it was based only on the mutual desire to attach it mutually beneficial. For Pashinyan, there is no sense in this, as, however, there is no need to burn bridges. The Kremlin also understands that a real reversal to the West is not a set of rhetorical exercises, as in the observed case, it is a large complex of reforms inside the country, which should be so deep that no “Georgian dream” for twelve years can unfold the country back. Nikol Pashinyan has not yet given no reason for suspicions of such reformation, and the situation with the bills he had to pay for this does not have.

The myth of the ability of Moscow to spoil the life of Armenia is no more tenacious than the myth of strategic allies

On the other hand, Moscow has to admit that the time in this plot does not work for it and the best that it can count on is to minimize losses, but it is better to pause everything to return to the issue as better times. Moscow hopes for them, and Yerevan has to proceed from the fact that such a probability exists. Cooling in the existing conditions is arranged for Moscow, it is not necessary to force it to Yerevan, especially since no one forces anyone to make plans with the planning horizon more than a month. And the turnover is growing, including, as many suspect, by participating in suction transactions.

Meanwhile, the most large -scale protests from the Pashinyan revolution in Armenia are exhausted, as previous and considerable. No matter how the Pashinyan is losing the popularity, to see in his place a man who today repeats his words, which once led to a disaster, the majority is probably not ready. Moreover, judging by fermentation in the opposition, there are also neither those who can take the premier chair, nor even those who really want.

And the Kremlin, and so has a reputation as a very unlucky “maker of kings,” presumably, guess that this is not the best case for its correction. And why - the current Armenian power is quite satisfied with him, because he does nothing of the fact that, according to Moscow, goes beyond the permissible. In the meantime, Yerevan, with his diplomatic victory, proposes to consider the Kremlin’s consent to withdraw border guards from the sections of a new border with Azerbaijan. Although it looks more that this consent gave just to Azerbaijan. And only secondly - Armenia.