A strong pro-Russian competition has started in Armenia and both the opposition and authorities are doing their best to prove their loyalty to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. While the politicians were discussing the announcement of ANC member and representative Lyudmila Sargsyan, which was addressed to the Diaspora in Russia and in which she said a slogan that “by voting for Vladimir they would help their fatherland”, the prime-minister of Armenia announced that “he wanted Vladimir Putin win the elections in Russia”.
“We are interested in stability and stabile development in Russia. Any processes in Russia have influence on the economy and political sector of Armenia as well. From this prospective I think you will agree with the fact too that now Putin and his political power are the one that can provide stability in Russia. I think that Armenia is interested in it too. Personally I think that way too,” said the prime-minister. In fact this means that the opposition and authorities are in competition to gain the patronage of Putin. On the one hand, it is an interesting coincidence that from one side such announcement is made by a representative of a political power that is “fighting for democracy”, and from another side such announcement is made by a representative from the government, who is considered to be one of the most pro-western officials in Armenia. With such policy both the authorities and the ANC are securing themselves from unpredictable developments. What if Putin gets angry? Of course the ANC made an announcement that L. Sargsyan’s opinion is not their official opinion. It took two days to make this announcement. This announcement contained a message, which is that they can give up on Lyudmila Sargsyan for the sake of “a mask of democracy”, but will keep supporting him. It would be primitive to think that Lyudmila Sargsyan has made such announcement without the preliminary agreement on the part of Levon Ter-Petrosyan. Otherwise it would mean that the ANC is destructing. Furthermore, it would be more logical to view this announcement in the context of Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s message to the PA that was entitled as “political analysis”. The authorities are in a funny situation too. On the same day when the young republicans were leaving for Brussels to take part in the summit of the European Democratic Party the prime-minister made an announcement endorsing Putin, thus putting his European colleagues in a funny situation because the new member of the democratic movement is supporting Putin. The issue of Putin has another political context too. It is two years that the political circles discuss the issue of possible return of Kocharyan to active politics having the precedent of Putin. Does this mean that the mentioned member of the opposition ANC and the prime-minister hope that Armenia will be saved due to Putin’s return, thus Kocharyan’s return as well? This is very interesting.