The fate of Armenia is not decided in Moscow, Washington, Brussels, or Paris. Vahe Hovhannisyan

“Our strategic task is to achieve de-escalation within the country and at the borders. A week or two ago, at the beginning of the campaign, I said that the greatest danger is if we think that the fate of Armenia will be decided in some other capital,” says Vahe Hovhannisyan, a political scientist and candidate for parliament on the Prosperous Armenia party list, in a post titled “Why is the atmosphere in Armenia being radicalized?”, continuing:

“The fate of Armenia is not decided in Moscow, Washington, Brussels, or Paris. The fate of Armenia is decided in Yerevan. And June 7 is exclusively an internal Armenian election. If we think differently, it will ultimately be decided in Baku.

Unfortunately, in our pre-election period, there is still no proper understanding of this imperative idea.

We are recording a significant escalation within our country. The problem is all around us, we are going down the path of escalation internally. The idea of ​​internal solidarity, which was the leading provision of the “Proposal to Armenia” program of the Prosperous Armenia Party, faced a barrage of aggression and threats from ONE person. What does Armenia gain? What do we gain? No one gains.

We also got an escalation on the external border, in this case, in relations with Russia. Was the price of playing a Zelensky game worth it, that many branches of our economy face a real risk of bankruptcy?

Zelensky was in Baku before coming to Yerevan. But he did not make provocative anti-Russian statements there. He did not say a word. He considered that provocations should not be made in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan is not that country, but in Armenia it is possible. Why did he do that? Let's think about this.

By the way, there is information circulating in the Azerbaijani press that R. Vardanyan may be extradited to Ukraine, allegedly for financing anti-Ukrainian activities in Donbass.

I don’t know if it’s true or a hoax. In both cases, it’s very dangerous. We shouldn’t let anyone try to turn our country into a new Ukraine. There are many who want to, our seriousness is our weapon.

There is no rational answer to why the government is radicalizing the atmosphere. It’s not a good time to hold power, nor for various transformations. Why does the programmatic, even if sharp, debate atmosphere turn into radicalization? That issue should be discussed within the government itself. No one will benefit from it. Internal escalation will very quickly lead to external escalation, in one way or another, to one extent or another.”