We present an interview of political analyst and media management specialist Pavel Dallakian to Lragir
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ou predicted Russia’s withdrawal from the South Caucasus long ago, Since the time, that view has became stronger and stronger in vast segment of the Armenian political sphere. What were these assumptions based on, which now few doubts?
They were built on an analysis of regional trends, on the exposure of Russian realities, as well as on non-public documents that were in circulation in Russian expert circles and passed to President Vladimir Putin “we must leave the Caucasus” message. At the same time there were some diametrical proposals from the same circles. For example the intervention in Syria, the terminal state of which we are now seeing. All we had to do was to compare the content of these two competing areas with the economic, technological and, mainly, demographic state of Russia and draw conclusions.
I am convinced that the President of the Russian Federation made the decision to leave forcedly. By the way, Serzh Sargsyan’s administration could radically influence Russia’s Caucasus policy and, in particular, prevent the second Artsakh* war through Yerevan’s military involvement in Syria as a Russian ally. But the emphatically provincial horizon of the Karabakh clan’s ideas completely excluded such reversals. Big politics is not about filling your pockets with handfuls of Karabakh gold.
In your publications you specified the time of decision-making on the Caucasus as 2014-2015.
Yes, the current Russian doctrine drafted in 2011-2012 held the weight in 2014. Putin manifested it actually giving up Ukraine as a whole country in favour of purely Russian Luhansk-Donbass and Crimea at first stage. If until 2012 Putin did not put forward any “Russian idea”, moreover the national idea as such was publicly branded by him as baloney, then in 2014 the concept of the “Russian world” was formed as the third reincarnation of the Russian Empire since 1917. It implied a concentration on the ethnic Russian directions and retreat from the Caucasus. Evidences exist that the doctrine was formulated in general terms back in 1984, during the reign of Yuri Andropov. It is worth adding that the number of reincarnations did not benefit any empire yet.
What role does Turkey play in Russia’s retreat from the Caucasus?
It plays as a key, but driven actor. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s proposal to Moscow in 2008 to divide Georgia might be accepted as a basis. The proposal was rejected by Dmitry Medvedev only to be accepted in an extremely expanded mode 7 years later. Why divide something, we offer the entire South Caucasus, Moscow said. In 2015, after the April commemoration of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, Putin’s agreement with Erdogan, similar to the Lenin-Kemal’s one of 1919, was formulated apparently in the form of a memorandum. Having begun much earlier, with the Unkar-Iskelesi Russian-Turkish Treaty of 1833, Russian strategic support for the Ottomans was to reach its logical elongation in today’s Armenia – in the guise of a certain Nikol Pashinyan.
Why logical? Many say that the Russians are targeting not Armenia but the West, aiming its deterrence.
Yes, there is a temptation to simplify the issue, but this is not the case at all. Even the Russian Empire being allay of part of the West as a member of the Entente, in 1916 objected to the upcoming dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire under the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreement and the creation in the east of Asia Minor of an independent, viable Armenian state with access to the sea or seas. The so-called Entente-Sazonov** dialogue took place, as a result of which Armenia, physically exterminated with the direct participation and moderation (Tarasov) of the Russians, was destroyed already “on paper”. Then there was no global confrontation between Russia and the conventional West to destroy Armenia to spite him.
In the crosshairs of tsarism and bolshevism, as now, was Armenia itself. This is an ontological question for Russia. Regardless of the attitude of the Armenians themselves Moscow considers them sworn enemies and is certainly right. They know much more about the Armenians there, than Armenians know about themselves. And this is a problem of very weak Armenian historiography.
Armenian and proto-Russian, and then Armenian-Russian state relations go back a thousand years. The question has always been who will win in a mortal fight, this should not be denied. There is no need to hide behind the fig leaf of “two centuries of brotherhood.” Meanwhile interpersonal relations between Armenians and Russians are distinguished by a special, I would say, unexampled cordiality. This is the legacy of the Armenian imperial and godparental beginnings, radiating rays from Constantinople of the 9th century. Another thing is the states of modern times.
Does this mean Armenia is doomed to disappear as a state, and the people will be deported from the last fragment of their vast homeland, as was done in Artsakh**? In particular, recently President Putin directly admitted at the Valdai Forum that in November 2020 the Armenian side was forced to surrender the cradle of its ancient statehood, city of Shushi, as a result of a conspiracy between Moscow and Baku.
There are the elements of determinism, certainly, but President Serzh Sargsyan’s possible initiative on Syria is an example beyond such determinism. The possibility of going beyond the historical pattern is also supported by the huge financial and political contribution that Russia and Turkey are investing in the Yerevan elites, in wide network of agents of influence and operational management in European capitals, and in the thoroughly corrupt Armenian mass media.
What is it about. Newton’s laws of force and reaction and the evolution of systems have been known to natural science for a long time. Without the colossal potential of the millennia-old skeleton of the Armenian civilization, such investments would not have been required to destroy it. We can state that the Armenian system is in a dynamic balance yet. At the same time, significant, truly revolutionary transformations occur in our brains (empf. – Lragir). The main thing is to guide them, which is what we try to do more than a decade.
The decision is ours – to transform this potential into political, economic, military pressure in the region and wider, or to leave the historical arena. To do this, first of all, you need to decide on your aims, set the parameters and order of destruction of enemy institutions. The Armenian state is being destroyed from the outside and from the inside; ideological corruption and erosion of identity are being especially propagated. Meanwhile, the actions of the Armenians as a nation and state should also imply destruction (empf. – Lragir) with the threat of appropriate weapons and hybrid methods of warfare. Of course, all in the name of friendship of peoples, regional peace and the common human good, as the father of European nations, Mr. Michel, bequeathed.
Перевод с армянского Ezerk, оригинал Lragir.am, 07.10.2023
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