Armenian authorities turn an ally into an enemy – pundit

Research Fellow at the Applied Policy Research Institute of Armenia (APRI Armenia) Sergey Melkonyan has said that Armenian authorities make an enemy out of an ally.

“There are no regular contacts between Yerevan and Moscow at the level of heads of state, foreign ministers, defence ministers, secretaries of the Security Council, etc.,” Melkonyan told Armenian media, Caliber.Az reports.

"At the same time, all designated representatives from the Armenian side are going to the Munich Security Conference as part of a single delegation. This is the first indicator. The second one is reduction by Armenia of security cooperation with Russia with a parallel expansion of this dialogue with the West. Moscow may interpret this as a rupture of relations, while Yerevan as diversification. In reality, these are indicators of attempts to replace Russia's role both in the negotiation process and in the field of security," the political scientist told reporters.

This policy, according to Sergey Melkonyan, so far leads to the fact that Yerevan does not get real new allies "capable of containing Azerbaijan and Türkiye, equalizing the regional imbalance".

"In parallel, Yerevan gets Russia, which occupies not only the role of a neutral arbiter, but already as an actor against whose interests the ally takes active steps. Obviously, this will lead to a negative reaction. It can be expressed even in the very absence of any reaction, if we are talking about security issues," Melkonyan concluded.