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Will Biden save Pashinian from trouble?
February 27, 2021Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian is in trouble.
Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian is in trouble. The country’s military just issued a memorandum urging his government to step down. Describing the ultimatum as a “coup attempt,” Pashinian dismissed the military’s top commander and took to the streets with his supporters. That former President Robert Kocharian and former Prime Minister Vazgen Manukyan endorsed the military’s statement shows that Armenia’s politics are out of control.
Hardly anyone finds it surprising that Armenia, which suffered a humiliating defeat in the second Karabakh war, is experiencing turmoil. Tensions had been building up, as Armenians attempted to find someone to hold responsible for their defeat.
Under heavy pressure, Pashinian infuriated Moscow by claiming that Armenia’s Russian-made ballistic missiles did not work. The military, in turn, blames what happened on the prime minister’s misguided foreign policy.
To be fair, all of those claims are partly true.
Pashinian, a pro-American politician, could not strike a healthy balance between the Russian influence over his country and his government’s policy of closer cooperation with the Western alliance.
Failing to appreciate Azerbaijan’s military preparedness, support from Turkey and active diplomacy with Russia, he ended up making futile calls to Western capitals.
The solution was to hand over Azerbaijan’s sovere
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