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Russia’s Influence in FSU States - Are Countries Like Armenia Still Friends or Are They Now Foes?

- The crisis is taking longer than expected. Armenians hate it when you compare it to the Maidan. They say: "Don't you dare make comparisons." All political powers want to ally with Russia. There was a giant rally in Gyumri, where the leader of the protest Nikol Pashinyan said that he intended to cooperate with Russia and everyone who encouraged severing relations with Russia was the public enemy of Armenia. That's something. We'll be monitoring the situation. A chaotic motion is one thing but it's quite another when a new system is being gradually established and political steps made. Our country must stay vigilant. Yet again the discussion arises about our soft power and our ability to have sway over ex-Soviet states like Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Moldova. Some of them openly dislike Russia. Some are our friends. Others pretend to be our friends exploiting our relations. Our relations with ex-Soviet republics are complicated. Why? What has Russia done wrong after the collapse of the USSR? And what are we expected to do? In both of my shows, we've said multiple times that something's off. This trend goes straight from the 90's when we didn't care about it. Now, we're starting to realize it but we haven't yet switched to the required mode when we clearly see our national interests and defend them using a variety of mechanisms. Mr. Kurginyan, please. Sergey Kurginyan, leader of Sut Vremeni movement: Well, regarding Armenia we can't say that there are no analogies but at the same time, there are no direct ones. We can't really say that it's anti-Russian Maidan in Ukraine, that would be a lie. It's not true. If someone from the Armenian crowd starts shouting anti-Russian slogans the crowd would get three times smaller. There's no major Bandera-like force that could promote the anti-Russian agenda. The existing forces inclined to support Russia. - It's also a mono-ethnic state. - That's right. Karabakh also occupies a certain position. Plus, Armenia has several issues that can't be solved the way Ukraine solves its issues. The situation's totally different. But there are some similarities. And they are quite obvious. Everybody knows it's been triggered by the US, or rather British intelligence. Everybody knows what it did in Yerevan. Everybody knows that this whole complex process couldn't be triggered by the American manipulations alone. There have been certain anti-Russian manipulations. Paradoxically enough, those manipulations were possible in Armenia. That soft power used in Ukraine long before the Maidan started was used again in Armenia. The system doesn't work. I've said it multiple times in various programs: The system's dysfunctional. Rossotrudnichestvo, the Foreign Ministry, and even more serious offices are all dysfunctional. We can work in a single mode when the head of the state creates some task force and that task force begins to sort things out. That's first. Secondly, we were monitoring that soft power and even published the works of Sharp. We were also monitoring the Harvard works of Joseph S. Nye in the late 1980's. And everything was fine, right? It was fine while there was a policy. When there's no policy no technology and no power, be it soft or hard, works. Sharp doesn't work when there's no precise policy. It's an add-on. Understand? It's good when you've got good wheels and good tires but you still need a car. You replace the old tires with new ones, it'll drive better. But, if you don't have a car, you won't get much use of the wheels. Thus, talking about soft power without politics is pointless. So, the main question is who we bet on in the places where we conduct soft power. - Another question arises with this one. - Who did we prepare for this and how? - Did we even prepare anyone? - What's our monitoring process? Who are we watching? Are we watching those who run but are incapable, or at national leaders? These people need to prove themselves, they can't be our puppets. They must be national politicians. This way we can see that if a politician sees national interests as we see them, when it comes to the mutual dialogue, if this politician has people's support, it's great. Finally, the last lesson. We must understand that when these leaders, who appear to be playing with us, also play with others, but they turn out to be weak, that's how Maidans begin. Maidans never begin unless the society gives them a reason. Those people who ruled Armenia led their country to this Maidan. Then, they threw up their hands and said the words their son-in-law wrote instead of the originals. They went out with those words, and the politics began to crash. What does this lesson teach us? As soon as a weak person appears, the one who can't defend their declared interests, the one who's no longer supported by the society, the one who's been compromised, you know Maidan is coming out of nowhere. That leads to my next question. What are we ready for in this situation? What will we do? It's not just about Maidan now. The powerful Ukrainian forces in Donetsk or anywhere else, they could've changed thing in Kiev like they did on Poklonnaya. Will the civil society be engaged or not? It wasn't. I wanted to… - No, sorry, you might be ashamed to talk about it, but I'm fine. I'd like to remind everyone of the situation on the Bolotnaya Square in 2011-2012. Things were changed by Sergey Ervandovich and Alexander Andreyevich Prokhanov. - Nikolay Starikov was there. - They led the movement. This movement gathered way more people than there were against the government. That's when the opposition realized something was wrong. - Are we convinced? Are we? I just want to make a point here. Yerevan and Kiev are two different cases. In Kiev, we let things get out of control fast. Here, it's also out of control. But, in Kiev, they had a locomotive that was moving against Russia. In Yerevan, they don't have that opportunity. There's the Karabakh factor. But where will Armenia go with this factor? Towards Turkey? Towards NATO? They won't go there. There will be a limit. Petrosyan wanted to bring it there. Pashinyan is directly connected to Petrosyan, we can see their schemes. But as soon as this happens, Karabakh and national Armenia turn around. I'll also add that if Azerbaijan decides to create something like NATO, we can be certain that even without us, Iran alone will be enough to stop it. That's why the situation in Caucasus isn't the same as in Ukraine. We do make the same mistakes. We wasted Ukraine, now we wasted it here. The system is faulty. But, the process continues in different directions. - We have the full name. - That's right. - When we say, for the millionth time, that this or that didn't work, we don't analyze, we don't troubleshoot, we don't learn our lessons. Thus, as you have said very well, I think of Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin. And there we go again. We can't do that. Sergey Ivanovich, go ahead. - The first thing that we need to know, and it's important for everyone to get it, whether something happens in Armenia or Kyrgyzstan, it's our safety belts. A safety belt has already been broken in a certain location. When all of our safety belts break, the situation will get extremely unpleasant for us. As they say, 'Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.' Did you see how all those sleazebags began to worry when Armenia started to resemble Maidan? All these people who want it all to happen in Moscow started yelling. That was first, and it's an important issue. Second, they failed there, they failed here. The punishment has to be severe and obvious. People must know that when they take that path, they'll be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Third, we keep doing one thing consistently. What distinguishes us from Americans? At least, for now. I know you'll get me. We're not ready to die for our agents, it's over, we're not trusted. We don't have the kind of relationship when you'd bet your life on the person if they fail. We don't have that, we don't feel that those who were dying in Donbass will get medical help. We don't feel that families of the victims will be taken care of financially. We don't have that. We show the wrong image of ourselves. We don't love the ones who make sacrifices for us. Next, the system is dead, it's absolutely dead. It can't interact with the civil society. The system takes what's already dead out of that society. Let's look into this. In 2005, I won't say where, but they tried to figure it out after Yushchenko. Maybe, it's a different year. The question was that the civil society would rise in Moscow. Out of all the people they'd worked with for so long, did even one person go to Poklonnaya? Nobody did. They worked with someone in Armenia, too. Did anyone do anything? No. In Ukraine, with all their fibs, nobody did anything. We always work with the wrong crowd, just like our system does. All because the system likes them dead, the ones that will give back. Everyone knows that. The system doesn't like what's alive, it just doesn't. It repels anything that reaches out to Russians, that's what it does. It literally becomes the enemy of our nation's well-being. Either another system appears, or nothing will happen at all.