Yesterday Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin discussed the political situation in Armenia with leaders of the political parties represented in parliament during a visit to Yerevan. In fact this is an unprecedented event and virtually doesn’t fit in the diplomatic manners and especially in the inter-parliamentary format. Participants of the meetings, apparently the first of their kind informed that they also spoke about Russian-Armenian ties, the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Armenia’s strained relations with Turkey. They mainly discussed issues of the Armenia-Russia strategic partnership. At Karasin’s request, they also talked about the internal political situation in Armenia. While in Yerevan, Karasin did not meet representatives of the Armenian National Congress. Karasin downplayed this fact at the time, saying that Moscow has enough “information about what they in the opposition camp think.” The noteworthy things here is the “curiosity” of Karasin in the internal political situation of Armenia because Karasin and other Russian diplomats are much more informed about the rest of the matters than any of the Armenian factions. So if we leave aside the beautiful formulations then Karasin will most probably didn’t “inquire” into the standpoints of our parliamentarians and instead passed on to the latter the attitude of the Kremlin regarding the upcoming parliamentary elections. These might be instructions as well.
