Armenian PM's staff oppose rupture with Russia - media

Armenian daily Hraparak has published an article saying Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s associates are against breaking with Russia.

"On March 7, Nikol Pashinyan held a four-hour closed-door meeting with members of the Civil Contract Faction in parliament. The meeting was held in a broad format, and members of the government, including Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, two deputy prime ministers, Armen Grigoryan and others attended the meeting," the article says, Caliber.Az reports.

"A few days ago, at the previous meeting held there in the same format, Pashinyan informed the MPs about his intention to apply to become a candidate for EU membership and instructed the MPs to think and study the situation. Therefore, the Prime Minister did not make an opening speech at the previous meeting, but only listened to the opinions by his teammates.

Over 30 deputies made speeches, expressed problems and concerns. According to the data, the faction of the ruling party was strangely passive, many did not even attend the meeting. The position of unconditional movement towards the West was defended mainly by two MPs - Vahagn Aleksanyan and head of the faction Hayk Konjorian. Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan did not attend the session as he was on a working visit.

It became known that the majority expressed great concern about possible threats and developments, some even referred to the Secretary of the Security Council Armen Grigoryan, saying that he, holding pro-Western views, during the last closed meeting also predicted risks and spoke about the lack of diversification in case of threats to Armenia.

So the West offers no alternative to Armenia, no monetary support, no security environment, let alone if the Lars closes and there is an economic crisis, will European markets accept Armenian products, etc.?

Nikol Pashinyan, in fact, did not oppose these views, but stated that no matter what, they must take steps to get out of the current situation, and in his opinion, the step of turning to the EU is one of them. There were MPs whose nerves failed and they directly asked whether they were taking this step against Russia or for the sake of Armenia and what would it bring to Armenia? Naturally, Pashinyan did not say that it is not against Russia, but he did not answer in a clear way either, saying that this is why we started a series of discussions to figure it out. Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan showed incomprehensible behavior, in his speech he took the position that dependence on Russia is so great that it is really risky to take drastic steps, however, when some of the MPs agreed with this position, Mirzoyan suddenly said that he was misunderstood, that despite these risks Armenia should take this step.

Instead, Hakob Simidian made a well-reasoned speech, stating that after this step Armenia will face at least sad developments. The summary opinion of the majority in the ruling party was that the process should not be rushed until the heads of the relevant departments guarantee with clear facts the ways to ensure stability after applying for EU membership. Until then, such a move would be a gamble. They decided the discussions should continue from different angles.

One of our interlocutors summarized his impression this way, that Nikol has backed down, but we don't know what made him do so. A few days ago things were very belligerent. We have news that he will even go to Moscow in the near future," the article notes.