The assisted suicide of the Armenian state
Vazken Andréassian
Directeur de l'Unité de Recherche HYCAR [Hydrosystèmes Continentaux Anthropisés – Ressources, Risques, Restauration]
I was asked questions by colleagues who wanted to understand the reason for the demonstrations calling for the resignation of the Armenian government, and I wondered how I could make the situation in which Armenia currently finds itself comprehensible. Looking back at the end-of-life bill that has just been presented to France's Council of Ministers, I came up with what I think is the most accurate definition of the current situation: what has been happening in Armenia since 2018 is state–suicide, but not just any suicide – it's assisted suicide.
I explain below why I chose this definitAn examination of the long list of (apparently) incoherent decisions taken by Prime Minister Nicol Pashinian since he came to power provides a relatively clear picture of his suicidal strategy (even if we fail to understand his underlying motives):
·??????? Armenia is a member of a security agreement with a group of former USSR states, led by Russia: the Collective Security Treaty Organization or CSTO (NATO's eastern counterpart). In 2018, the CSTO's Secretary General was Yuri Khachaturov , an Armenian national. As soon as he came to power in 2018, the Armenian Prime Minister took the initiative of having Yuri Khatchaturov (for whom he had a personal hatred) indicted, which immediately damaged his relations with Russia;
·??????? On September 1, 2020, just before Turkey and Azerbaijan launched their offensive on Artsakh, Stanislav Zas, First Secretary of the CSTO, wrote a letter to Armen Grigorian, Secretary of the Defense Council of the Republic of Armenia. In this letter, he describes in detail the scenario for the coming war. The CSTO proposes to hold military maneuvers on September 15. The Armenian government did not answer;
·??????? In September 27, 2020, Azerbaijan, aided by Turkey, launched an offensive against the Republic of Artsakh. Nicol Pashinian made the following surprising statement to the National Assembly: “?Let us agree together on one thing: whatever happens, we will not consider ourselves defeated?”;
·??????? On October 19 and 20, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin had several telephone conversations with N. Pashinian and I. Aliev in order to obtain a halt to the fighting from Azerbaijan. He later recounted: “I couldn't convince Aliev to stop the war. His condition was the return of Azeri refugees to Shushi, under the supervision of Russian peacekeepers. But surprisingly, Nicol Pashinian rejected this offer”;
·??????? On November 9, 2020, Nicol Pashinian signed the capitulation. The document is kept secret; all we know is that it consists of nine points;
·??????? On May 12, 2021, the Azerbaijani army entered Armenian territory sensus stricto and took control of the border territories located at high altitude (2700 m) around the “Black Lake (Sev lidj)”, 15 km as the crow flies from the town of Goris in southern Armenia, controlling not only the town's drinking water sources but also the access routes between several border villages. Nicol Pashinian ordered the Armenian army to withdraw, declaring “We will not engage in a war over 30% of Black Lake [...] What are these snow-covered mountain territories for? [...] The army must defend the population, not deserted territories”;
·??????? On September 7, 2023, on the eve of Azerbaijan's final assault on Artsakh, Mrs. Anna Hakobian, wife of Prime Minister Nicol Pashinian, was sent to Kiev to deliver a cargo ship of “humanitarian aid” to Ukraine[1]. Even Radio Liberty (financed directly by the US State Department) could not refrain from pointing out[2] that “Ukraine's current and former governments have repeatedly voiced support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict”;
·??????? On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan launched the offensive that enabled it to expel the entire population of Artsakh. An unknown number (a few hundred) of Artsakh Self-Defense Army soldiers were killed while covering the civilian retreat. Several soldiers of the Russian peacekeeping force were killed, and the latter abandoned its peacekeeping mission. Dozens of Artsakh's political leaders were taken hostage. The army of the Republic of Armenia stood idly by;
·??????? On April 24, 2024, on the occasion of the commemoration of the Armenian genocide, Nicol Pashinian gave a speech[3] in which he no longer used the word “Turkish” (but only “Ottoman”), and in which he repeated the official Turkish theses concerning the reasons for the elimination of the Armenian people from the Ottoman Empire, “victims of geopolitical intrigue and false promises” and no longer victims of the Young Turk government's policy of extermination[4].
?
The surprising change in attitude of Western embassies
Nicol Pashinian's choices have provoked numerous protests in Armenia, but he has succeeded in silencing them thanks to ever-increasing police pressure. One might have thought that this would earn him condemnation from the countries of the European Union, but it didn't. Avetik Ishkhanian, a lawyer and human rights campaigner since Soviet times, summed up his observations on the changing attitude of Western embassies in an “open letter to Western ambassadors”[5]:
·??????? Until 2018 (when Nicol Pashinian came to power), Western embassies were extremely vigilant on human rights issues. Since 2018, their attitude has changed: no protest when the Prime Minister threatens the opposition in parliament with a hammer or promises to make them “eat bitumen” during the election campaign;
·??????? No protest at the detour of administrative resources to the benefit of Mr. Pashinian during the 2021 elections, which are described as “fair and free” by European observers;
·??????? No protests against the uprooting of the judiciary and the Constitutional Court (including politico-judicial pressure exerted on the President of the Constitutional Court and those close to him).
?
Assisted suicide?
All the elements listed above are clearly distressing, but it could be objected that the current situation is “only” a suicide, because if Nicol Pashinian took power thanks to a street mobilization (which he himself described as a “velvet revolution”), he then had his seizure of power validated by the ballot box, a first time in December 2018, and a second time in June 2021, after the capitulation to Azerbaijan. If the Armenian people have chosen suicide, it would – after all – be their decision... rather like the French choosing to reappoint Napoleon III after his defeat at Sedan in 1870, or Pierre Laval after the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945.
What argues in favor of the theory of assisted suicide is the turnaround of Western diplomats in Armenia, described by Avetik Ishkhanian: in the context of the crisis and war in Ukraine, and the state of latent war between Israel and Iran, everything seems to be in place to obtain the departure of Russian troops stationed in Armenia, and to change the balance of power on Iran's northern border in favor of Azerbaijan, which is massively armed by Israel, notably with drones.
If Nicol Pachinian's decisions always go in the direction of weakening Russian influence in the region in favor of NATO's, this is clearly no coincidence. His choice to begin his era by humiliating Russia with the Khatchatourov affair was certainly no accident. At the time, the ambassador in Yerevan of a NATO member country remarked that if his own country had acted similarly, it would probably have been “annihilated by the United States”. This was not the case for Russia, which left it to Azerbaijan and Turkey to wash away the affront. For what Nicol Pachinian failed to realize is that NATO's representative in the region is, and always will be... Turkey, which continues to exalt the memory of the “Young Turks” responsible for the Armenian genocide of 1915, and welcomes anything that will enable it to complete the work begun over a century ago.
?
[3] https://www.primeminister.am/fr/statements-and-messages/item/2024/04/24/Nikol-Pashinyan-April-24/
[5] https://armactu.fr/2023/10/27/13480/An examination of the long list of (apparently) incoherent decisions taken by Prime Minister Nicol Pashinian since he came to power provides a relatively clear picture of his suicidal strategy (even if we fail to understand his underlying motives):
·??????? Armenia is a member of a security agreement with a group of former USSR states, led by Russia: the Collective Security Treaty Organization or CSTO (NATO's eastern counterpart). In 2018, the CSTO's Secretary General was Yuri Khachaturov[1], an Armenian national. As soon as he came to power in 2018, the Armenian Prime Minister took the initiative of having Yuri Khatchaturov[2] (for whom he had a personal hatred) indicted, which immediately damaged his relations with Russia;
·??????? On September 1, 2020, just before Turkey and Azerbaijan launched their offensive on Artsakh, Stanislav Zas, First Secretary of the CSTO, wrote a letter to Armen Grigorian, Secretary of the Defense Council of the Republic of Armenia. In this letter, he describes in detail the scenario for the coming war. The CSTO proposes to hold military maneuvers on September 15. The Armenian government did not answer;
·??????? In September 27, 2020, Azerbaijan, aided by Turkey, launched an offensive against the Republic of Artsakh. Nicol Pashinian made the following surprising statement to the National Assembly: “?Let us agree together on one thing: whatever happens, we will not consider ourselves defeated?”;
·??????? On October 19 and 20, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin had several telephone conversations with N. Pashinian and I. Aliev in order to obtain a halt to the fighting from Azerbaijan. He later recounted: “I couldn't convince Aliev to stop the war. His condition was the return of Azeri refugees to Shushi, under the supervision of Russian peacekeepers. But surprisingly, Nicol Pashinian rejected this offer”;
·??????? On November 9, 2020, Nicol Pashinian signed the capitulation. The document is kept secret; all we know is that it consists of nine points;
·??????? On May 12, 2021, the Azerbaijani army entered Armenian territory sensus stricto and took control of the border territories located at high altitude (2700 m) around the “Black Lake (Sev lidj)”, 15 km as the crow flies from the town of Goris in southern Armenia, controlling not only the town's drinking water sources but also the access routes between several border villages. Nicol Pashinian ordered the Armenian army to withdraw, declaring “We will not engage in a war over 30% of Black Lake [...] What are these snow-covered mountain territories for? [...] The army must defend the population, not deserted territories”;
·??????? On September 7, 2023, on the eve of Azerbaijan's final assault on Artsakh, Mrs. Anna Hakobian, wife of Prime Minister Nicol Pashinian, was sent to Kiev to deliver a cargo ship of “humanitarian aid” to Ukraine[3]. Even Radio Liberty (financed directly by the US State Department) could not refrain from pointing out[4] that “Ukraine's current and former governments have repeatedly voiced support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict”;
·??????? On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan launched the offensive that enabled it to expel the entire population of Artsakh. An unknown number (a few hundred) of Artsakh Self-Defense Army soldiers were killed while covering the civilian retreat. Several soldiers of the Russian peacekeeping force were killed, and the latter abandoned its peacekeeping mission. Dozens of Artsakh's political leaders were taken hostage. The army of the Republic of Armenia stood idly by;
·??????? On April 24, 2024, on the occasion of the commemoration of the Armenian genocide, Nicol Pashinian gave a speech[5] in which he no longer used the word “Turkish” (but only “Ottoman”), and in which he repeated the official Turkish theses concerning the reasons for the elimination of the Armenian people from the Ottoman Empire, “victims of geopolitical intrigue and false promises” and no longer victims of the Young Turk government's policy of extermination[6].
?
The surprising change in attitude of Western embassies
Nicol Pashinian's choices have provoked numerous protests in Armenia, but he has succeeded in silencing them thanks to ever-increasing police pressure. One might have thought that this would earn him condemnation from the countries of the European Union, but it didn't. Avetik Ishkhanian, a lawyer and human rights campaigner since Soviet times, summed up his observations on the changing attitude of Western embassies in an “open letter to Western ambassadors”[7]:
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·??????? Until 2018 (when Nicol Pashinian came to power), Western embassies were extremely vigilant on human rights issues. Since 2018, their attitude has changed: no protest when the Prime Minister threatens the opposition in parliament with a hammer or promises to make them “eat bitumen” during the election campaign;
·??????? No protest at the detour of administrative resources to the benefit of Mr. Pashinian during the 2021 elections, which are described as “fair and free” by European observers;
·??????? No protests against the uprooting of the judiciary and the Constitutional Court (including politico-judicial pressure exerted on the President of the Constitutional Court and those close to him).
?
Assisted suicide?
All the elements listed above are clearly distressing, but it could be objected that the current situation is “only” a suicide, because if Nicol Pashinian took power thanks to a street mobilization (which he himself described as a “velvet revolution”), he then had his seizure of power validated by the ballot box, a first time in December 2018, and a second time in June 2021, after the capitulation to Azerbaijan. If the Armenian people have chosen suicide, it would – after all – be their decision... rather like the French choosing to reappoint Napoleon III after his defeat at Sedan in 1870, or Pierre Laval after the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945.
What argues in favor of the theory of assisted suicide is the turnaround of Western diplomats in Armenia, described by Avetik Ishkhanian: in the context of the crisis and war in Ukraine, and the state of latent war between Israel and Iran, everything seems to be in place to obtain the departure of Russian troops stationed in Armenia, and to change the balance of power on Iran's northern border in favor of Azerbaijan, which is massively armed by Israel, notably with drones.
If Nicol Pachinian's decisions always go in the direction of weakening Russian influence in the region in favor of NATO's, this is clearly no coincidence. His choice to begin his era by humiliating Russia with the Khatchatourov affair was certainly no accident. At the time, the ambassador in Yerevan of a NATO member country remarked that if his own country had acted similarly, it would probably have been “annihilated by the United States”. This was not the case for Russia, which left it to Azerbaijan and Turkey to wash away the affront. For what Nicol Pachinian failed to realize is that NATO's representative in the region is, and always will be... Turkey, which continues to exalt the memory of the “Young Turks” responsible for the Armenian genocide of 1915, and welcomes anything that will enable it to complete the work begun over a century ago.
[1] The CSTO was created in 1992, and Yuri Khachaturov was elected Secretary General in 2017. He was the first non-Russian to hold this position.
[5] https://www.primeminister.am/fr/statements-and-messages/item/2024/04/24/Nikol-Pashinyan-April-24/
?
State suicide
I refer here to the situation in which the political staff in charge of the Armenian state – under the leadership of the Prime Minister, who concentrates all powers – is deliberately implementing a policy whereby it is gradually handing over the Republic of Armenia to its hereditary enemies, Turkey and Azerbaijan. By choosing to describe the current process as suicide, I am referring to the almost uninterrupted succession of decisions contrary to the vital interests of the Armenian state taken by the Prime Minister since he came to power in 2018. Because statistically, if he were “simply” incompetent, he would occasionally take a decision in line with the state's interests. In game theory, we accept the possibility of tossing a coin 5 times in a row and getting tails 5 times in a row. The probability of this happening is low (1/32), but not zero. On the other hand, if you get 10 tails in a row, the probability becomes so low that it is safer to conclude that the coin you're playing with is rigged. The same applies to the politics of the Republic of Armenia since 2018: incompetence is unlikely, and it is better to talk about suicide.
?
A long series of (apparently) incoherent decisions and statements
An examination of the long list of (apparently) incoherent decisions taken by Prime Minister Nicol Pashinian since he came to power provides a relatively clear picture of his suicidal strategy (even if we fail to understand his underlying motives):
?
The surprising change in attitude of Western embassies
Nicol Pashinian's choices have provoked numerous protests in Armenia, but he has succeeded in silencing them thanks to ever-increasing police pressure. One might have thought that this would earn him condemnation from the countries of the European Union, but it didn't. Avetik Ishkhanian, a lawyer and human rights campaigner since Soviet times, summed up his observations on the changing attitude of Western embassies in an “open letter to Western ambassadors”[7]:
?
Assisted suicide?
All the elements listed above are clearly distressing, but it could be objected that the current situation is “only” a suicide, because if Nicol Pashinian took power thanks to a street mobilization (which he himself described as a “velvet revolution”), he then had his seizure of power validated by the ballot box, a first time in December 2018, and a second time in June 2021, after the capitulation to Azerbaijan. If the Armenian people have chosen suicide, it would – after all – be their decision... rather like the French choosing to reappoint Napoleon III after his defeat at Sedan in 1870, or Pierre Laval after the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945.
What argues in favor of the theory of assisted suicide is the turnaround of Western diplomats in Armenia, described by Avetik Ishkhanian: in the context of the crisis and war in Ukraine, and the state of latent war between Israel and Iran, everything seems to be in place to obtain the departure of Russian troops stationed in Armenia, and to change the balance of power on Iran's northern border in favor of Azerbaijan, which is massively armed by Israel, notably with drones.
If Nicol Pachinian's decisions always go in the direction of weakening Russian influence in the region in favor of NATO's, this is clearly no coincidence. His choice to begin his era by humiliating Russia with the Khatchatourov affair was certainly no accident. At the time, the ambassador in Yerevan of a NATO member country remarked that if his own country had acted similarly, it would probably have been “annihilated by the United States”. This was not the case for Russia, which left it to Azerbaijan and Turkey to wash away the affront. For what Nicol Pachinian failed to realize is that NATO's representative in the region is, and always will be... Turkey, which continues to exalt the memory of the “Young Turks” responsible for the Armenian genocide of 1915, and welcomes anything that will enable it to complete the work begun over a century ago.
?
[1] The CSTO was created in 1992, and Yuri Khachaturov was elected Secretary General in 2017. He was the first non-Russian to hold this position.