The co-chair of the joint Armenian-Russian parliamentary commission Nicolay Rijkov paying official visit to Armenia on these days held a news conference and spelled out his opinion on the presidential election and the likely nomination of the first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan. “Yes, I have known him but we were not too close. My relationship with the current president is totally different. Yes. I have met him several times and we had many contradictions, which I don’t wish to enumerate right now. I have heard he’s planning to run again. What forces are backing Ter-Petrosyan? One needs the support of strong forces to become president. As far as I know, his party, the Armenian National Movement, hardly gets 1 percent of votes. It is not serious,” said Rijkov despite the fact that the President, who Rijkov has close relations with, has turned Armenia into a Russian outpost; this is how the Russian chinovnik treats Armenia.
