Rupture testing

Where in the post-Soviet space the West seeks to create a new hot spot

The current development of global geopolitics has led to one key condition: it is difficult to develop independently — it is necessary to join alliances, protect your common market and focus on improving the welfare of the population

Amended scenario

The problems of countries and their nations are often rooted not in the absence of an economic basis but in the presence of political elites focused on the interests of foreign banks and corporations.  
The West is extremely apprehensive about the revival of integration ideas in the post-Soviet space, when a unification of states and fraternal peoples takes place. 
The current situation with Armenia and its bold statements about withdrawing from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) reveal exactly this approach — it wants to do good for the United States, the EU, and the UK to its own detriment.
Back in 2004, Ukraine, having failed to figure out the intricacies of deceptive manipulative technologies of the West, yielded to its blandishments. We can witness now the result of such carelessness, which is expressed in total control of the population by the Anglo-Saxon world, open Nazism, abuse and destruction of the Ukrainian people. 
The Armenian case is the implementation of a similar scenario, only with amendments for the South Caucasus. The essence is simple and consists in making this region another hot spot with a permanent armed conflict, and breaking the CSTO and the EAEU from the inside.

They have become frequent visitors

The failures of the current White House administration on the Ukrainian project, the inability to achieve a blitzkrieg, the decline in investor confidence in the initiators of this scam — all this makes Joe Biden and the elites associated with him rush. Armenia was chosen as a discontented and offended country that occasionally gets angry at Belarus and insults it, or threatens to leave the CSTO ‘tomorrow’.
According to the classical conflict resolution studies, all these manifestations are standard conflictogens — actions that do not lead to the resolution of disagreements, but, vice versa, contribute to the aggravation of conflict. Those who apply such messages are well-versed in the techniques of artificial conflict formation. 
Yerevan is currently inundated with hordes of high-ranking American, British and European officials. Thus, only in the last half a month, the country was visited by US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O’Brien (June 10th-12th), Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Richard Verma (June 14th). On June 16th, Armenia’s Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan discussed the Armenian-American security co-operation with Assistant to the US President for National Security Affairs Jake Sullivan. On June 17th, Armenia’s Defence Minister Suren Papikyan visited France to discuss the purchase of weapons and military equipment, where Paris promised to arrange deliveries of air defence systems.
Earlier, on May 21st, a CIA delegation headed by the agency’s deputy director, David Cohen, paid a visit to Yerevan. 
Interestingly, the staff of the US Central Intelligence Agency arrived at a time when active protests were taking place in Armenia demanding Pashinyan’s resignation. It is possible that the American intelligence services could have advised Pashinyan and Grigoryan on stabilising the situation in the country. 
It is noteworthy that on the eve of the visit of the CIA representatives to Yerevan, Grigoryan was interviewed on the local pro-Western resource CivilNet, where he criticised his country’s dependence on Russia in the security sphere. In particular, he spoke about the severance of ties with the Russian Federation in the defence sector and recalled that over the past four years, imports of Russian weapons have decreased from 96 to 10 percent. Now Yerevan is focused on the purchase of weapons from the EU.

For reference
From March 2012 to September 2013, Armen Grigoryan worked as a civil society officer at the representative office of Counterpart International in Armenia. From April 2015 to May 2018, he held the position of a project co-ordinator of electoral programmes in the public organisation Transparency International Anti-Corruption Centre. In May 2018, by decree of Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, Grigoryan was appointed Armenia’s Security Council Secretary.

Norms of political correctness

Richard Verma’s arrival in Armenia was not accidental, either. It was he who, under Barack Obama’s presidency, ensured the rapprochement between the United States and India. Now Armenia is interested in weapons from India to compensate for the loss of supplies of weapons and military equipment from Russia. In addition, Nikol Pashinyan and his corporate entourage hope to join in the Indian-Iranian logistics megaproject related to the use of Iran’s Chabahar port as it seeks access to India and other Asian nations. 
In addition, Nikol Pashinyan’s elites and his entourage hope to grab hold of European ‘helicopter money’. Thus, Yerevan has recently approved the signing of a financial agreement between Armenia and the European Commission titled Instrument for the Implementation of Reforms and The Armenia–EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA).

The desire for fast money has crossed out many norms of political and diplomatic correctness in Yerevan’s relations with post-Soviet countries. Thus, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan met with a representative of the Belarusian fugitive opposition in mid-June in Vilnius, Lithuania. Is it possible to act like that if the country is an independent political player? Obviously no.

Such decisions are clearly the result of the work of external forces focused on disrupting good relations between countries within the integration associations (CSTO, CIS, EAEU). 

Staying strong in the face of manipulations

Sure enough, politicians face increased pressure from the so-called power players when pursuing their independent line. Georgia’s case is a telling example in this regard. Due to Tbilisi’s adoption of the law on foreign agents, the European Union is exploring the possibility of suspending high-level bilateral visits and signing bilateral agreements. This is included in the package of immediate measures. 
At a press conference in Luxembourg following the meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers on June 24th, Head of EU diplomacy Josep Borrell insisted that if Georgia’s government did not change the course of action, the country would not progress on the European Union path.
According to him, against the adoption of the law on transparency of foreign influence by the Georgian authorities, Brussels will strengthen support for civil society and media in Georgia. In other words, the European Union is determined to stage another ‘velvet revolution’ in Tbilisi. However, there is certain confidence that the Georgian people are already tired of being exposed to political technology experiments and will simply destroy any ‘newly-minted Saakashvili’ at the first stages of their appearance in national politics.  
Thus, the West keeps playing its game — in an attempt to weaken Belarus and Russia, it hits the weakest link in the CSTO and the EAEU. Washington and London are interested in igniting the South Caucasus and creating ‘the war of all against all’. 
Armenia has obviously been chosen as a kind of Ukraine 2.0 in this region. Nevertheless, the Armenian people, like the Georgian people, have an alternative — not to succumb to and stay strong in the face of those manipulations and deception, and finally realise that the West does not care about the happiness of other nations and puts its own interests above all. In contrast, it is important for us, Belarusians, to preserve peace and stability between brotherly peoples, allies and partners.

The United States never thinks about the interests or aspirations of other nations, and is solely guided by its own super earnings. A minor part of such increased profits can be allocated to the maintenance of a puppet government — in simple terms, traitors.

By Aleksei Avdonin, analyst at Belarusian Institute for Strategic Research (BISR)