Russia will not allow itself to be destroyed; Armenia faces enormous danger — Arbak Khachatryan

First Informational’s interviewee is expert Arbak Khachatryan.

— Mr. Khachatryan, Armenia has many companies with Russian capital, including the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant, Gazprom and Electric Networks of Armenia. They have strategic importance for our country. Do you think steps should be taken at this stage to ensure their uninterrupted operation?

— Armenia faces far bigger problems than the work of those companies. Look at what is happening in Armenia these days. Taking advantage of the wartime situation, they raised housing prices to make money from Russians. In other words, a trading mentality continues to operate in Armenia: wherever there is profit, everything else can be forgotten. These days Russians are primarily settling in Armenia and Georgia. What do Armenians do? They evict their compatriots from rented homes to rent them to Russians at higher prices, simply to make more money.

In that case, a strategic approach in the country becomes impossible. Moreover, the leadership has no direction either; it is sitting on virtual money. Armenia faces an enormous danger. In major games, small countries interest nobody: if they disappear, they disappear; little will change. Brain centers should have sat down to calculate those risks, but this has not been done because such centers do not exist at all. Everyone in Armenia is focused on trading; a merchant’s mentality operates, which is why no strategy is developed in any direction.

Russia will never allow itself to be eliminated. It has no other path; the only means is a nuclear missile. And if humanity does not disappear as a result, we will still come out ahead. It is sad, but Armenia is in a situation where it makes no difference whether Russians or Turks bring that money to Armenia. For a country without strategic direction, a state in name alone, what does it matter who becomes its master?

— Now that Russia’s economy is being crushed by Western sanctions, what dangers will Armenia face?

— That is precisely the danger: it seems nobody in Armenia cares. All they care about is how to sell something and to whom they can sell it for more. What other fool would think of creating jobs in wartime through people who have plundered? Their entire attention is on selling flour at three times the price. A square meter of housing in Armenia sells for more than in Paris simply because Russians may come here. With this idea and approach, do they understand the country is heading toward destruction?

You saw what happened to Russia’s billionaires, but these scoundrels do not care until it reaches them and destroys their own homes. Nobody asks why we have not had normal statehood. The reason is that we have always seen only the immediate profit. What are 2 million people to Russia? But it does not matter: they will keep going until Armenia, too, falls under sanctions. Meanwhile, the danger of war remains hanging over us.

— War against Armenia?

— Against Armenia too, but even if it begins in neighboring Georgia, Armenia will not remain unaffected, because there is not a single brain center here. It is a collection of merchants. The grandfather and his heirs brought the country to this state. Perhaps the grandson does not plunder, but he has done even greater harm to this country. The greatest danger hanging over Armenia is precisely its lack of strategy. People think about earning millions while destroying statehood. Wait for the third blow.

Russia, I repeat, will not allow itself to be eliminated, and that is the worst thing. All the neighboring republics, large and small, will be destroyed. Russia is not North Korea; it is a powerful global state. Do you understand how far the situation may go? In an interview with you a year ago, I said: do not take Putin’s words that there would be no world without Russia as ordinary words. I said they must be taken with the utmost seriousness. If he sensed the danger hanging over Russia and took this step, can you imagine what he might do later?

Small countries do not matter to the world. Do you know the difference between Putin and Hitler? Hitler had a coalition in Europe; Putin does not.

If 25 years ago the Minsk Group was created for the Karabakh issue and it was possible to work more or less, that will no longer be possible now. People in Armenia are busy constructing buildings, but in the end those buildings will explode over their heads.