The most talked about issue today in Armenia is the gas price increase. People are talking about both the time needed to repair the gas pipeline explosion and the Armenian-Russian gas price negotiations. In reality, the issue is much more complicated. The issue concerns reviewing Armenian-Russian relations. What’s important here is what Armenia thinks of Russia and what Russia thinks of Armenia.
Problems with the “younger brother”
For decades, Armenia has considered Russia as the “older brother”, “the Armenian people’s savior”, “strategic ally”, etc. To this day, we still look at Russia this way. This is instilled in our minds so much that the soldiers that fought in the Karabagh war and have not come face to face with any Russian during those years still say that “we can’t win any war without Russia.” In reality, the Russian (Soviet) forces have only participated in one war-they seized the Shahumyan region along with the Azeri, but this didn’t change our attitude towards Russia.
The same is going on today. A week ago, people answered to a survey and more than half of the people surveyed said that they don’t think that Russia will increase the gas price for Armenia. However, many officials have already said that Russia will follow market prices.
Basically, we still believe in the Armenian-Russian “brotherhood” and continue to leave a good impression on our “older brother” and at times forget about our national dignity. In addition, we try to make the Russians understand what Armenian-Russian relations are all about. The concert put on during the opening ceremony of the Armenian year in Russia is proof of that. You got the impression that Armenia is not a state, but rather a land which provides Russia with the best working field and we wanted to show that that “working field” has a great culture.
“Solnechnaya Armenia” (Sunny Armenia)
How does Russia look at Armenia? Russians see no difference between “Solnechnaya Armenia” (Sunny Armenia) and “Solnechnaya Turkmenistan” (Sunny Turkmenistan). It’s just that the Russians are a little more scornful towards us. When a Russian official calls Armenia a “fore post”, we are not dealing with whether he is right or not. We are dealing with the fact that he thinks that he is complementing Armenia by saying that. Basically, he thinks that it is an honor for Armenia to be a fore post for Russia The official is not to blame; we are the ones that have shown ourselves that way.
If Russia tried to trick us and we got tricked, this wouldn’t be that big of a problem. But the thing is that Russia is not trying to trick us. The Russians have told us over and over again that they are not our allies in the Karabagh peace settlement and they see a settlement only within the framework of Azerbaijan’s totalitarianism. Russia said that the gas price increase has nothing to do with politics and that they are only protecting their economic interests. A couple of days ago, the Russian Defense Minister made a sensational announcement, stating that Russia plans on selling weaponry to Armenia and Azerbaijan with economic purposes. In other words, Russia is doing its best to “open up our eyes” and forcing us to forget about the “brotherhood”, but we continue to believe in that.
So, all the commotion regarding the gas price during the past couple of weeks will answer an important question: will we able to overcome this or not? As a matter of fact, if we do overcome all this, it will not affect Armenian-Russian relations. On the contrary, the relations will be even stronger and practical. It has been proven that if only one side loves the other, then those relations are bound to break, in contrast to mutual love.