Many people are complaining about the issue concerning the increase in the gas price imposed by our strategic ally Russia. Owner of ALM holding and leader of the Popular Party Tigran Karapetyan and leader of the Constitutional Rights Union (CRU) Hrant Khachatryan were debating this issue at the “Hayeli” club yesterday.
The debate heated up when Tigran Karapetich, who is pro-Russian, made some rude comments about Russia. According to him, Russia’s politics “has changed to economy”.
“Russia is leading the following kind of politics-it wants to create equal conditions for all the CIS countries and plans on keeping all those countries as allies. Today, the Russian Federation is thinking about ways for making its economic strength a factor and so that it can have not only a political but also a economic balance in the world,” says Tigran Karapetyan as he reveals the secret goals of Russian politics. He added that we Armenians also want to become stronger. According to the head of ALM holding, by controlling our nuclear plant, today Russia is not providing us with an alternative. We have no alternative “to reduce the electricity prices so that we can compensate the gas price increase with electricity.”
“Besides that, Russia is creating obstacles for the Iranian gas pipeline issue, making it so the gas pipeline doesn’t make it to Europe. They are making us choose an alternative,” said T. Karapetyan in anger.
H. Khachatryan agrees with T. Karapetich when he says that we have to choose an alternative. Khachatryan adds that the alternative doesn’t have to be strategic, but rather, we must have a national strategy.
We are faced with the following problem: do the Armenian and Russian states really represent the people of Armenia and Russia respectively?
The leader of the CRU asked himself this question and answered it too. According to him, the Armenian state doesn’t represent its people.
“Our authorities are not leaning on the people for leading the right form of politics. They are trying to keep power,” says H. Khachatryan.
According to him, the strategic cooperation between Russia and Armenia is a result of inertia. T. Karapetyan also doesn’t think that there is some kind of moral standard here. He believes that Russia has decided to get stronger both politically and economically. Whereas before Russia was involved in leading politics, now it is involved in economy and we must respond adequately.
“We can not just go along with that form of politics and consider ourselves as allies. We have to look for an alternative,” says head of ALM holding. He brings the Ukrainians up as an example. They were bringing up different factors.
“They used to say that they would do this and that to the gas from Turkmenistan. What we have to say to Russia is if they don’t provide us the gas at the price we want, then we will do this, that…Robert Kocharyan, the leader of the country, should be the one that says that,” says T. Karapetyan as he threatens Russia. Karapetyan was going against Russia during the debate yesterday and even proposed bringing up the issue of removing the Russian military bases from Armenia. According to T. Karapetyan, today, the Iranian issue is in the center of attention of the world. We are a neighboring country and we have a military significance and we have to take advantage of that.
“Armenian authorities have to teach Russia that they are not scared. I don’t consider Russia as the one that manipulates us. Our one and only leader is God,” says leader of ALM holding. According to Karapetyan, Armenia has always led good politics with Turkey and Iran. Today, Armenia must lead the same form of politics without emphasizing the fact that it is pro-Russian or pro-Western, however, we are not leading good politics.
“If we were to do that, then we wouldn’t give the nuclear plant to Russians. We wouldn’t do a “Property in exchange for debt” deal, that was wrong,” says the president of ALM holding. As to the fact that Armenians don’t complain about the “Property in exchange for debt” deal or the fact that we have handed over a large part of our energy to Russia and still continue to treat Russia with respect, Karapetyan thinks that this is just a 70 year inertia.
“Just because we have good relations with Russia doesn’t mean that it is our leader,” he says.
Did the Russians betray us by increasing the gas prices, or did we lead the wrong kind of politics which led up to the increase? Tigran Karapetyan says no to each question. How does Karapetich plan on calming the people’s anger?
“Why do I have to calm them down? On the contrary, I will add salt to the wound,” he said and amazed the people present. He stated once again that the Russian troops allocated in Armenia are not defending the border.
“Can’t we put on a hat of a border keeper and consider that a factor?” says Karapetich. He claims that Turkey will not attack Armenia if the Russian troops are not in Armenia. “If Turkey were to attack, it would attack Cyprus before us,” he says.
As for oppositionist H. Khachatryan, he continued to choose his words carefully when making comments about Russia. According to him, the gas price increase is not the issue that should lead to bringing up the issue of removing the Russian troops out of Armenia. It turns out that the leader of the CRU is not even interested in the gas price increase.
“I don’t really care about the gas price. All I care about is how we can have better relations with Russia, the U.S., Europe and China,” he said.