In this episode, former U.S. Army officer and military-political analyst Stanislav Krapivnik discusses the geopolitical fallout from the Trump-Pashinyan-Aliyev summit in Washington, which saw the announcement of a “peace” framework, the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group, U.S. plans for a 99-year “Trump Corridor” across Armenia, and the dropping of Section 907 to allow arms sales to Azerbaijan. He examines Russia’s heavy focus on the Ukraine war at the expense of the South Caucasus, the loss of Russian leverage over Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the growing role of Turkey. Krapivnik warns of U.S. and British designs to destabilize the region, outlines possible Russian and Iranian responses, and explores the strategic importance of Georgia, the Abkhazia railway, and regional connectivity. The conversation also delves into Armenia’s domestic political challenges, the influence of Western NGOs, and the erosion of core national institutions.
Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Conversations on Groong episode. Today, we’re talking about Armenia, the South Caucasus, and Russia in the context of an evolving world geopolitical current. We have a first-time guest with us, Mr. Stanislav Krapivnik, who is a former U.S.
Army officer, supply chain exec, and military political expert now based in Russia.
Hovik: If this podcast is interesting to you, if you’re getting value from it, then we’d appreciate if you could let us know. And you can do that by many different ways, including buying us a coffee through our donate page, which is podcasts.groong.org / donate. There you can either become a Patreon subscriber or buy me a coffee subscriber and either do a one-time donation or provide us a monthly recurring source of revenue, which would be greatly appreciated. That would be great.
Yeah. And if you can’t do those things, then we will definitely also appreciate your likes, comments, and shares because that also provides a signal and it helps us be discovered, which we’re working hard on. So we’d appreciate your help in that direction as well. Thank you.
And on with the show.
Asbed: On with the show. Mr. Stas Krapivnik, welcome to the Groong Podcast.
Hovik: Thank you.
Stas: Thank you. Nice to be here.
Asbed: Stas, thanks for making time out of your busy schedule to talk with us. We have had comments on our shows requesting to bring you on our show. So in addition to our own desire to connect with you, we know that our listeners are going to appreciate hearing your insight on our topics.
Stas: Thank you. I hope so.
Asbed: So as this is your first time on our show, would you give us a quick rundown of who you are, what interests you, what keeps you busy, and what keeps you awake at night?
Stas: Well, in my former life, I was a U.S. Army officer. I left as a captain promotable, turned down major’s rank, and I did it for political reasons. And partially because in 1999, I was in… part of the staff of ATT Airborne Corps in a G3 section.
And, you know, what shocked me was, 99 except for, when we were preparing to, take Baghdad, the planning missions, the G3 is operations and plans, plans and operations. Everything else, every scenario that was run, everything was done against the Russian army. So there was no stop in preparing for war with Russia, even while the politicians were looking each other in the eyes and Bush is saying, you know, I see Putin’s soul and we’re going to be friends and all that. But the reality is they’re always prepared for war.
Just until 1999, the concept was that Russia is going to die on its own. So we don’t really have to work too hard at it. We’re just going to wait it out. It’ll collapse.
And when it didn’t collapse, you know, that’s when the panic started. Yeah, OK, we’re going to have to do something about this to make it collapse. After that, I was a MBA in supply chain. So I was a junior director, senior director in supply chain for Cameron and Halliburton.
Came back to Russia in 2010, greenfielded an office in Russia, supply chain office for Cameron. setting up Russian suppliers. And then I became, uh, director of supply chain for Eurasia for Halliburton. So I had five countries, about 18, 19 locations. We kept expanding and moving.
So they, they were in flux. So, and I saw this, you know, in 2013, over the holidays, I was watching all this was happening. I’m like, okay, I am, I know where this was heading. And one of the guys that was working for me, he was a former major in the Russian Space Forces.
And we were driving south of Moscow to go see one of our warehouses. And a couple of my guys were in the car with me. And they asked me, Stas, what do you think is going to happen? It’s going to be a bloody civil war.
I was like, how can you say that? I’m like, I can say that because I know the people are standing behind this Maidan. It’s going to be a bloody civil war. And unfortunately, I was very right.
And I was right in a lot of these things. People just didn’t want to appreciate the fact of what was going on. You know, I came back in 2010 and I was telling everybody, including people in the government, this war is going to come. Nobody wanted to hear that.
Zhirinovsky, of course, was saying the same thing. Nobody wanted to hear him. He had to die before people started listening to him. I’m hoping they’ll listen to me while I’m still alive.
Asbed: So how old were you when you came to the US and how did you end up in the military?
Stas: I was seven and a half when we moved in 79 in the military. Well, I wasn’t particularly planning. Well, actually, you know, when I was in high school, I asked the recruiter because, you know, for those that don’t know the American system, every American high school has a recruiter, dedicated recruiter. That’s right.
Who’s there to get you into the army. At 17 at that point, that was, I think 17 is no longer allowed. I think it’s 18, but maybe I’m wrong. By that time it was 17.
You could go in the military. So, and I’d asked him, I want to be a tanker. Uh, he’s like, you know, you’re Russian. They’re never going to let you near a tank.
I’m like, okay, screw off. Uh, Then when I went to university, I even remember I was sitting on my bed with the university applications, and I had one from West Point, which I probably wouldn’t have been able to get into because you have to have a senator backing you, and Russophobia in the U.S. was never that light. And I also have for VMI and some others. I’m like, yeah, screw it.
I don’t want to be in the military. A year later, I was an ROTC. A year after that, I was enlisted in the National Guard. And in 95, I became an officer on active duty.
So I come from a military family, historically military family. My mother’s mother’s family were Russian, so Russian nobility. back from the times of Ivan Grozny, Ivan the Third, not the terrible British propaganda, Ivan the Third. So from the 1500s, maybe even earlier, the family has been, it’s been predominantly military service. And my grandfather was German, was a German aristocrat who wound up in the Polish army and then wound up in the Red Army after he’d been taken prisoner by the Red Army in 39.
He joined the Red Army in 1940 and went down to the end of the war. So that’s to the light that the Soviet Union executed all the Polish officers. Right. Fascinating.
He sat in a POW camp for a year, and then in 1940, as a German, joined the Red Army. He was a surgeon, true enough. He had been serving in a Polish horse cavalry. And in 1942, Stalin stood up the first Polish army, which was three divisions.
They had the full range of officers. So if they’d executed everybody, obviously they wouldn’t have had generals, colonels, captains, lieutenants, and so on. And then my father’s family were enlisted under the czars. That was a 25-year enlistment.
Basically, it’s a life career for those days. And so they sort of military up to my grandfather who didn’t uh he he was a mechanic uh and even though he got called up uh for world war uh for the great patriotic war world war ii they literally pulled him off the train a couple times because he’s the last mechanic left uh in this factory so like we can’t you know he he got the notice he went uh he got on the train two times to go out to the front and they came running over there pulling him off even though and my grandmother actually my father’s mother was a trained sniper But my father was born two weeks or two months before the war.
So she got an exemption from going to the front because she was a young mother. So I guess I got another one. So it kind of, it still came out. So yeah.
Hovik: Fascinating, fascinating story of how you ended up in the army and also now you’re back in Russia. So Kudos to you. But I want to take us forward to today. We’re recording this actually on Saturday, August 9th, right?
And just yesterday, Trump hosted a high-profile summit with Pashinyan and Aliyev announcing a historic breakthrough, in quotes. Besides… Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed, or at least sort of announced, that they had initialed, of course they did not sign the so-called peace agreement, which we still cannot see yet, but they have initialed this peace agreement. They scrapped the OSCE Minsk Group, which is the organization responsible for regulating the conflict between Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan for nearly three decades.
Beyond the pomp and circumstance, the ceremony was rather light. Azerbaijan and Turkey have many more preconditions to the actual signing of a real agreement and normalization of relations. Preconditions that are designed to strangle Armenia. And peace is very far away.
And none of that was discussed yesterday. So if you go and ask Aliyev today, he’ll say, oh yeah, change your constitution. Bring 300,000 Azerites to Armenia and so forth, and then I’ll sign it. But none of that appeared yesterday.
They’re all smiling. It was just surreal for us to see. And the U.S. ended up walking away with a long-term, I believe they said 99-year, but I may be wrong about the exact number of years, corridor across Armenia, right? It used to be called the Zangezur Corridor, the so-called Zangezur Corridor.
Now we’re going to call it the so-called Trump Corridor. And the sad thing is that Armenians of Artsakh were left out of the conversation entirely. Not the right of return, not about anything about cultural heritage, not even the Armenians who are currently hostage in Baku were mentioned in this. And I don’t want to go too long, but The US also agreed to drop section 907, which was a ban on US weapons sales to Azerbaijan.
And the US will now be offering weapons to Azerbaijan as if that country needed any more weapons. In the end, it turns out that while Trump had promised to reduce America’s global footprint, Washington has now inserted itself squarely between Russia and Iran. slicing across the north-south axis with the new east-west alignment. So Stas, with that long introduction behind us, I want you to tell us your perspective from Moscow and potentially also, you know, what the Iranians might think. Is this a “peace deal” in your opinion or a provocation?
Stas: You know, I’m going to say some things that probably trigger some people, so sorry, but, you know, In the 1820s, Russia freed first the Georgian principalities, there were six of them, and the Yerevan Khaganate from Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, and the Persian Empire in the east. thanks to post-Soviet and maybe even to some degree Soviet education, and particularly post-Soviet, where NGOs like Soros, they come in and they print history books. They specialize in printing history books in all these countries because they get to dictate the past that way. The youth are mostly very, very ignorant of reality.
I’ve seen that in Tbilisi that I just came back from, and I’ve My wife is from Tbilisi, so I was there a military advisor there. So I’ve been in Georgia many times. A lot of friends there and friends in the government. But the youth are mostly ignorant of reality.
They’re ignorant of the fact, for example, and I’m getting to the point. The Tbilisi principality joined the Russian Empire. It asked to join. Alexander I didn’t want to go south, period.
He just… He was very liberalized. He didn’t want to expand the empire, but he was told, look, there are Orthodox Christians. They’re being massacred, flat out being massacred.
We cannot let them be exterminated. And they were asking to join the Russian empire because that’s the only way they were going to survive. And when the Tbilisi principality joined the Russian empire, it had a population of 40,000 people. Those are the people that ran away into the mountains and the hills and hid.
Because two years earlier, the Persians came in because Tbilisi refused to convert to Shiite Islam, left 150,000 corpses and took 250,000 prisoners. Well, maybe the numbers are smaller. That’s kind of the numbers that popped into history. Probably was a bit smaller.
But still, the point is, is they burnt the city, they massacred the population, took everybody’s slaves. The people that came back were the ones that survived. In the West, the Turks were doing the same thing to the Georgians. The majority of the Orthodox martyrs were from the 1800s, early 1800s, late 1700s.
And people don’t know this because the books have been written. Yerevan is the same thing. We’ve seen the Soros Foundation and other American foundations that come in. They totally rewrite the history.
They brainwash the youth. And then you get people like who I call the anti-Armenian, Pushinyan. This guy, he, but he’s not, the problem is he’s not alone. I’ve had, I’ve talked to people who know the, I guess you could call, you call them the elites, but they’re more like the aristocracy in Yerevan.
And a lot of them want to join the Turkish world. They don’t mind becoming Sunni Muslim. They don’t mind burning the church down because they’ll be part of the bigger world. They’re going to get rich.
So this is a class of people that are traitors, absolute traitors. Ethnic, national, religious traitors. They’re not going to go away. The only way to get rid of them historically is pitchforks and torches.
When the war in Karabakh started, one of my friends is a major in Russian intel. He was a captain at this point. He was sent down there to find out what was going on. Him and one of his partners were sent down there.
And the first thing they did was they stayed two days in Yerevan to see the mood of the people, to understand that. And, you know, most of the people thought that, yeah, we’re just outside of Baku. The war is over. We’re going to win.
And he said, you know, reality is quite the opposite. You know, they were basically treated as lepers. They barely got into Karabakh because the entire border was sealed off of Pashinyan. Volunteers had to sneak in to fight.
Obviously, they were abandoned. This is where the Bayraktar made its great debut because there really wasn’t any anti-aircraft systems to fight it because the Armenian army wasn’t participating. They just let, under Pashinyan, just let the people be exterminated.
Hovik: Yeah, I just want to confirm that because I was here during the war and many people who had signed up to be volunteers were told just, you know, wait, we’re still not accepting, you know, we’re not going to send you yet. And indeed, Pashinyan had not mobilized all of the Armenian army, only the part of the army, you know, it was unofficially part of the Armenian army, but part of the Armenian army that was stationed in Karabakh, or what we call Artsakh, was doing all the fighting. So I just wanted to confirm that.
Stas: And they were left out to hang because they had no aviation. They didn’t have any serious anti-aircraft systems. They had very little armor. They were basically just infantry who had barely any understanding of what was going around them because the intel wasn’t coming through.
They were the sacrificial lamb. Look, we kind of put up a fight. But… And then…
You know, the second round, Pashinyan just absolutely just gave up all pretenses. And he used the excuse, well, the Russians didn’t come fight. Well, you know, Russia is in a situation where Karabakh is officially, globally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. But Armenia always had claims on it.
So Russia could back the Armenian claims. But when the leader of Armenia says, we don’t have no claims on it. Russia has absolutely no legal basis to do anything at this point. But it becomes an easy excuse for these liberal elites that are sitting in Yerevan.
Hovik: Yeah, you know, I just want to say I just we have actually we want to go into that a little bit more. But and I just posted on my Twitter, you know, look, I’m the first one to admit that Armenians You know, we are the first ones to blame for even tolerating Pashinyan. I mean, we have to recognize that we have been worked on by much powerful forces, but in the end, it was us who didn’t rebel and Pashinyan is still in power. But regardless of that, you know, how do Russians feel about what’s going on in general, let’s say, with or without…
What, you know, Armenia did. This seems like a permanent, some kind of intrusion into the Caucasus by the United States. Do you think this will be something that Moscow or Iran will tolerate?
Stas: You know, from, if you’re talking about the public, the public either, so some portion doesn’t care because Ukraine is just a bigger issue. or has given up because look, you know, if we’re gonna get blamed for all that, you know, fine, whatever. Enjoy being under Islamic rule. That’s the public opinion, a lot of people, not everybody, of course. You know, I look at it as this is a existential threat to Russia.
All of this, the caucuses is as much as an existential threat to Russia as is Ukraine. The only positive thing that can come out of this if you can call it positive, is first of all, let’s look at it realistically. If the people do not remove Pashinyan right now, I mean, the time’s up. It’s basically, there’s the cliff.
One foot’s hanging off the cliff. The other foot is on a banana peel. And you’re about to go right off that cliff. There will not be an Armenian.
There will be a Khaganate of Yerevan. It’s just a question whether it’s going to be Azerbaijani or Turkish or split down the middle. There will not be an Armenian. Armenians are going to get exterminated or mass converted or forced out.
That’s just going to be the reality of it. It’s written all over the walls. I mean, you just have to listen to what these people say. The only positive is the Georgians are going to be scared shitless when this happens, and they’re not going to be playing with the Turks anymore.
They’re going to be understanding that the only way they stay a sovereign nation is that Russia has their back. That’s the only positive I see coming out of this. By the way, the Turks have already made claims on Georgia verbally a year ago. Erdogan was in Reaza, and he was saying, you know, Batumi is right over there.
That’s all Turkish and ours. That’s all of ours. I see no difference. I mean, that’s a Kasabala right there, that he’s already claiming parts of Georgia, and they’re flooding in Turks as much as they can.
So, you know, these are people that are out for empire. You’ve got the Azerbaijanis. Well, We’ll see if Azerbaijan survives as a state, A, and B, whether Aliyev and his clan survive in there, because Russia is already taking certain action, and so is Iran. Azerbaijan has gone empire crazy, right?
So they started piling up troops on Iran’s border. They provided a platform, a minimum for drones, Israeli drones, to attack northern Iran. Right. there have been about four or five fuel tankers that have popped up in the Caspian on the beaches in Iran. So we know that at least some jets, Israeli jets, were flying through Azerbaijani airspace.
These are for F-16s. They dropped the extra fuel tanks. They’re under the wings. They’re big, bulbous fuel tanks.
When the fuel runs out, they jettison them and keep going. So the fact that they’re popping up in the Caspian or dropped over the Caspian, tells us that Israelis were operating in that area, shooting into northern Iran.
Hovik: And Israeli F-35s are the only ones that have that jettisonable fuel tank. You know, the normal F-35s don’t.
Stas: F-16s also have them. F-16s also have them. It’s not a new technology. So a lot of American planes have those.
They’re very particularly, particularly, plus, you know, stamp made in the USA. That kind of gives that away. The Azerbaijani started piling troops on the Iranian border. Iran has responded in kind.
On top of that the Azerbaijanis, as we know, the Azerbaijanis, there are about 2 million Azerbaijanis in Russia. A lot of them are in organized crime that controls the markets. And it’s come out that, and I’ve seen documents on this, the actual docs, that the Azerbaijanis are providing intelligence services for not just Azerbaijan, but the whole bouquet of CIA, MI6, Mossad, SBU. And, in fact, the arrest, when all this started, the arrest started on a federal level, not on a local level.
And they started in Yekarinburg because in Yekarinburg there was a 71-year-old fellow by the name of Ismail. I can’t remember his last name. He is a Persian from Azerbaijan, which is a persecuted minority. So if they’re willing to persecute other Shia minority, they’re not going to have any problems you know, at minimal persecuting, at maximum genociding Christians.
So just to understand people we’re dealing with. So this guy was outspoken, 71-year-old, in Ekaterinburg. He represented the Shia minority, the Persian minority in exile.
Hovik: He disappears.
Stas: He disappears. A week later, he pops up in Baku in the hands of Azerbaijani intel. And at that point, the FSB went… The lights went out.
Beep. Okay, we’ve got big problems here. And the arrest came from the FSB. They didn’t come from MVDA.
They didn’t come from local police units. They came from federal-level structures. And all this has gone now on a federal level. There’s a crackdown on illegals in Russia in general because the Western security services have been getting them riled up while the war is going as an internal threat.
And additionally… A lot of those happen to be Azerbaijanis. So Russia started mass exporting them back. Now, if you even send 10%, say, or 20% out of 2 million, that’s somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 that are going to appear in Azerbaijan without jobs, pissed off because they’ve lost their property, or if they had any, without jobs, no way to come back into Russia.
And that’s going to be a very explosive situation for a year. And it already is becoming an explosive situation for a year. On the other hand, the Azerbaijanis are trying to kick something off in Dagestan. Now, outside of the Russians, there are about 10% of the population.
There are 70% of the czars, but 10% now. There are 36 different ethnic groups in Dagestan. That’s why Dagestan would never revolt against Federal because they’d just start massacring each other. A lot of them really, really don’t like each other.
But in that relatively not such a large territory, there are 36 different ethnic groups. And the second biggest one is Azerbaijanis. And just to put it into perspective, that’s 5% of the population. It’s not a gigantic portion of population.
But they’ve already started pushing their nationalistic agendas. There’s been videos coming out. There are singing nationalist songs in their schools and their villages and so on and so on. So they’re obviously trying to move in every direction.
The Georgians have a bone to pick with them because there are certain Georgian territories that are in Azerbaijani hands. And the Azerbaijanis, the Georgians have been in those mountains for the last three and a half, 4,000 years. And the Azerbaijanis are trying to wipe out all traces of Georgian heritage, saying that they’ve never been Georgian and so on and there’s never been There’s several monasteries in their hands that are very, very holy to the Georgian Orthodox Church. So there’s there’s a lot of bones to pick stars.
Asbed: The same kind of rhetoric comes out of Azerbaijan about Armenians as being a bunch of nomadic tribes, et cetera, et cetera. I think they’re very good at these kinds of narratives. But I want to ask specifically, you are you’re talking about a lot of friction that’s going on around Azerbaijan, given this Washington, D.C. summit that happened just today, 12 hours ago. The situation is only going to get worse.
And the United States is actually talking about openly arming Azerbaijan. I’m not entirely sure why it needs to be armed even more. The question I want to know is how might Russia and Iran respond to this? They’re not just going to sit idly and watch this go down.
Stas: You know, they’re threatening.
Asbed: Let me add one more thing. I’m very concerned. I’m very concerned that the whole area might turn into another Afghanistan or Vietnam for Azerbaijan and Armenia because of this. They’re just turning the place into a big battle place.
Stas: Oh, that is absolutely America’s goal. And you can read it on these RAND reports. The Caucasus is scheduled to be a battlefield of extermination to try to pull Russia in. The Balkans, they’re trying to do the same thing, though.
I’m not quite sure how they plan to pull Russia in. We don’t have a landowner to them. But there’s all these areas that they’re planning on setting on fire. And overall, the U.S., you know, and I’ve heard this from several sources.
The U.S. is going down. I mean, that’s obvious. The U.S. dollar is in a sovereign debt crisis. They’re now pushing a four-week sale of $100 billion in treasury bonds, four-week treasury bonds.
These are emergency measures normally, but now they’ve said, oh, this is going to become normal. So, you know, if you can’t sell the 30-year, you can’t sell the 20-year. Now you’re selling a four-week It has to be rolled over and rolled over. You know, you’ve got really bad problems.
You’re like the kid with the 50 credit cards. You know, which credit card am I going to put this charge on? I’ve got to pay for this credit card, so I’ll pay it with this credit card. And it doesn’t work because the interest keeps rising and the interest, the debt keeps rising.
And that’s the U.S. But it seems that the big elites in the U.S., because I’ve heard this from smaller elites and people who are around them, are going for a global economic crash because they believe that they can weather it. Yes, the American middle class is going to be dead. Totally.
And don’t think buying gold is going to save you. 1932 says otherwise. For those that don’t know that, that’s when G-men were standing in all the banks and confiscating all the gold coins and confiscating a third of the gold jewelry and giving people paper money. So much for gold. The government confiscates.
It’s like sex. The first time is a little difficult. After that, it comes pretty natural. The first time you confiscate the gold, it’s a little difficult.
The second time, you’ve got a precedent. We’ve done it before. We know how to do this. But they’re going for global collapse because they think that they’re going to be able to weather it and come out on top of everybody.
And the Caucasus are just going to be one of the powder kegs they’re planning on, or not planning, they are lighting it right now. Azerbaijan, additionally, a former foreign minister of Azerbaijan came out and said, all the Turkic peoples in Russia… Because they’re claiming that the Turks are now claiming everything up until the Altai is ours. Oh, yeah, okay.
We’ll debate that. We’ll debate that with tanks before that happens. But all the Turkey people in Russia must rebel, and the Azerbaijani diaspora must support them in revolution. And this is the former foreign minister of Azerbaijan, so another person very close to Ayer.
In Russian, we have a saying, he lost the shore. He’s gone so far off the sea, he doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s going far. He’s going right into uncharted territory that he probably is going to regret.
Because, as they’re now saying, we have a right to have NATO bases on our property. We’ve dealt with that issue right now. That’s called somewhere between 1.8 to 2.5 million dead Ukrainian soldiers and NATO mercenaries and as many invalids in Ukraine. We’ve answered that.
We’re not going to have NATO bases on our border. Dagestan is our territory. That’s the border. They think they’re going to put a NATO base there.
They’re looking probably at at a possible intervention and not and not the good kind of intervention and considering everything they’ve done with Iran, Ian’s not going to sit around and wait for them to attack Iran. Again the Iranians know round two is coming uh that that’s beyond a doubt and i don’t think the Iranians are going to be sitting around the liberals in Iran have pretty much lost power uh because of everything they’ve done and they’ve got they want to be loved by the west the west loved them really really hard um You know, and the West tried to blame that on Russia, too. Russia gave up on Iran. No.
Russia proposed to Iran the same kind of conditions that Russia has with North Korea. Tehran rejected it. They went for just asinine a week wording in the friendship document. If you look at Section 4, Chapter 4, Section 4, 4.4, In it, it basically states that Iran and Russia will confront and resist regional threats.
I mean, that’s nothing, right? That’s empty fluff of rhetoric. That’s all Iran would agree on, the liberals in Tehran would agree on, because they didn’t want to scare the Americans and the Israelis. And then on top of that, Russia ratified the agreement almost instantly.
Iran ratified the agreement two days after Israel started really loving them, really loving them hard. They got the love, just like Syria. They wanted to be loved by the West, so they rejected Russia rebuilding their military. They rejected China rebuilding their military.
They rejected Iran rebuilding their military. And they rejected all three from rebuilding their economy. And, well, Assad is now enjoying his big apartments in Moscow, but the country is in, to call it a shambles is a lie. I just have one question.
Did Ursula von der Leyen and Donald Trump lick the blood of Christian children off their hands or wash the blood of Christian children off their hands when they shook hands with that animal called Al Julani?
Asbed: Well, I am quite concerned that Armenia might become another Syria at this point because it doesn’t look like, well, anyway, I’d like to, we’ll come back to the South Caucasus. Let me move on a little bit and let’s talk about Ukraine. What began as Russia’s special military action has become a drawn out war. Russia is moving the frontline westward, sure, but three years in, the war has drained a lot of resources, isolated Moscow, and consumed nearly all of the Kremlin’s strategic focus.
Putin has laid out his terms for ending the war, and Trump, who once claimed that he could solve Ukraine in one day, well, it’s been one day and seven months and counting, he may eventually realize that it’s a little more complicated than that. For context, you know, we are recording this on August. Well, it’s August 8 for me and August 9 for you guys. But in any case, a day after Trump’s tariff Armageddon Day, which means that was the day when he was going to start forcing countries to stop buying Russian energy.
So far, aside from tariffs on India, the big news as a surprise was that Steve Witkoff is in Moscow and they started talking about a Trump-Putin summit. First of all, why has this war consumed so much of the Kremlin’s attention? And as an Armenian, I’m asking that because it’s been at the expense of attention in the South Caucasus and Armenia as well.
Stas: Well, Armenia is a little bit different. You see, actually, I think that I wouldn’t say Russia really actually isolated. It isolated from the West, which is a good thing in this case, because, you know, don’t throw me in a briar bush. Whatever you do, don’t throw me in a briar bush.
Russia, I worked a very long time with Russian industry, so I know the level of Russian industry. It’s actually pretty advanced. And it’s pretty wide. The problem was always that Russians really don’t know how to sell things.
That’s the big problem. And it all went through various American companies or European companies. Now that’s been they’ve gotten independence from that. The story that Russia’s economy, even by PPP, is three percent of the global economy is a load of crack.
And I’ll explain why. Russian assets have historically been downgraded in value constantly by the West since the 90s. And this is done on a very good purpose because it’s easier to buy them. It’s cheaper to buy them.
And the plus side was that Russian businessmen, a lot of times they really know the market value of what they have. Right. So you’re dealing with businesses, whether you’re buying a business or you’re buying their production. They really don’t know the market value of what they’re selling.
They’re going to sell it a lot cheaper and you make money. So you downgrade the resource. You downgrade everything. As we’ve seen, the two percent by FX or by net or by three or actually, I guess it’s almost two. 4.5% by PPP economy, it turns out to be a hell of a lot stronger and bigger, because Russia is a full-service economy.
What does that mean? Russia can fully build jets. It can fully build cargo planes. It can fully build—okay, they’re not intercontinental, but they can build regional and local airliners.
Russia builds trains. Russia builds combines. Cars are the only luxury or small cars are the only really big weak point that for some reason we can’t normally build. Not since Tsarist Russia.
But they did. We can build ships. We can build space stations. We are a full service economy.
Europe takes the entire EU to do these things. They don’t have the industry. They can’t. They’re not a full service economy.
You take 300 million people and they can’t build half of what we’re building. We supply them with a hell of a lot more than oil and gas. We supply them with everything they need. In raw resources, in semi-finished goods, and in finished goods.
We fed them also. They were buying lots of our grain, rice, fish, pork, and so on. Russia is the biggest fertilizer producer in the world. You take out Russia, and food prices have been skyrocketing in the West.
There’s a reason for that. Fertilizer has gone up four times in cost. And the less fertilizer, the less yields, and the more the fertilizer costs, the more the food costs, because the input costs go up quickly. And that’s the whole point.
I mean, there was even a shortage of toilet paper in Germany for a while, until they got new sources of paper, because Russia was the producer of… paper so russia was producing these giant rolls of raw paper the germans were reprocessing it and selling part of that product back to russia well the germans said no well we’re not going to deal with russia anymore well one of my friends is an it director in the in one of these companies that produced uh The raw paper, cardboard, everything else is coming back from Germany. Well, guess what?
Over the last three years, that company has opened up six different manufacturing plants and they produce 80 percent of Russia’s cardboard needs. The Germans are never going to get this market back. It’s gone. That train has sailed and they blew, I mean, that ship has sailed and they blew up the port behind them.
It ain’t ever coming back. So the Germans are thinking that, you know, once this is over, we’re just going to walk back in. No, gentlemen, you’re not needed anymore. Thank you.
We’ve developed it ourselves. And once you start putting investment in, you have to justify that investment so you don’t go over to somebody else. You have your own manufacturing. So that’s from that side.
On the diplomatic side, if we look at what’s going on, you know, Russia is playing the key role in France losing its empire in Africa. And let’s not kill ourselves. The French empire never went away. The difference was the French decided, you know, white hands drew too much attention.
We’ll make a local African elite that’s absolutely dependent on us, whose money is in France. And they’ll rule for us. And they are losing that. And Zahal, they’ve lost their…
From Mali, they’ve lost the gold. From the other countries, they’ve lost the uranium. And this is going on.
Asbed: Most people don’t even know that there’s a full-on front in Africa between, let’s say, Russia and China to a lesser extent, but also France, the United States, even Ukraine, because they want to poke the bear. But with this kind of strength, Stas, why has the Kremlin fully focused on Ukraine? Again, I’ll ask again, because I feel like after the war in 2020, of course, the Ukraine war started in 2022. Since 2022, it seems like Russia has not paid any attention to the South Caucasus.
Stas: Everything has been on hold. This is a problem. Russia is finally starting to dissolve. This is self-imposed stupidity.
And I’ll say that straight out. First of all, when Azerbaijan shot down a Russian helicopter in Armenia during the war in Karabakh, you know, my personal response, I would have already left the order of anything happens like that, you take down everything that’s flying. Sorry. That’s our little response.
That’s what… Somebody like Alejo would understand. The fact that Russia didn’t, he took that as weakness, and he’s going to keep pushing until he gets a bloody nose or some teeth, until he has to swallow his teeth, or hold his head in his hands, literally severed. That’s about the only thing these people are going to understand.
Unfortunately, that’s what people were dealing with. That’s, you know, Russia did that to Turkey when Turkey shot down a Russian plane. When Turkey ambushed a Russian plane, Russia did that a little bit differently, but they did it on the economic front. They shut down Turkey.
Turkey’s main export markets were going first and foremost to Russia, and Russian tourists were coming in and feeding a large chunk of the Turkish economy. That ended instantly. And the Turks are sitting there, you know, yeah, we got points for shooting in the West for shooting down a Russian plane, ambushing it. And we’ve now lost how many percentage points of GDP?
And the Turks came to heel real quick from that, because if it keeps going, Erdogan’s going to wind up hanging from a lamppost because the people are going poor. So they came back real quick. But again, Erdogan plays every chair he can, so you still got to be careful. And all they have is there’s no difference in this case.
In fact, if things keep going the way they’re going, Aliyev sooner or later is going to wind up being a dead man to Erdogan. And when Erdogan says one people, two governments, the notion there is sooner or later is going to be one people, one government. There’s not going to be any room for Aleev in his plan. But I guess Aliyev is being blind on that part.
But the Ukraine—okay, when Russia came into Ukraine— It was an ad hoc move. It was an ad hoc move because the Ukrainians with American support, Trump’s support, number one, because Trump armed them to the teeth. And Biden, Trump just didn’t get a chance to start the war. He lost the elections.
Biden got the chance to start. This is a continuation of policy. You know, that’s right. This war would have happened no matter who was sitting in the White House out of these elites that are now that currently rule Washington.
It doesn’t matter what moniker he was going to wear. It’s going to happen anyways. Well, when Trump, I’m sorry, Biden was launching the war, the Ukrainians have piled up 250,000 troops on the Donbas border. The amount of artillery fire grew by over four times.
They were preparing to start an invasion, a genocidal invasion, because they never hid it. We’re going to exterminate everybody that lives here. We want the land. We don’t want the people.
And I’ve had several naive people in America and other places say, well, why don’t you just pack up their bags and leave? Russia’s a big place. Well, I’m sorry. Why don’t my people who’ve lived there for 500, 600 years, in some areas for 1,000-plus years, longer than America ever existed or anybody even knew America existed as a continent, have to pick up their bags and leave because some half-witted Nazis that you’re supporting come over and say, you’re not the right type of human. even though they’re ethnically exact same people.
Amazing, right?
Asbed: Absolutely amazing. And the same attitude happens in Gaza and the same attitude in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Stas: Absolutely. And same attitude happened in Serbia. Absolutely. In Kosovo, where the Serbs were pushed out by Albanian Islamic invaders.
Absolutely. The West, particularly America, if you really look at it realistically, has sacrificed more Christians and murdered more Christians in the last hundred years than anybody else. It’s an anti-Christian campaign. And it’s coming home to America these days.
It’s coming home to Europe these days. But Western Europe and America had no problem sacrificing Christians left and right. Smaller Christian groups, be they Greeks, be they Armenians, be they Orthodox in Syria or in Jerusalem or wherever. Never had a problem.
In fact, the Catholic Church, when the worst of the communist programs were going on in the early 20s, in the mid-20s against Christians, the Catholic Church was the apologist for the Bolsheviks because they thought they had a deal with Lenin that once the Orthodox Church is destroyed, the Catholic Church would get to come in and bring everybody to heel under the Pope and then answer in partnership with the Bolsheviks. When Stalin came to power, all of that went away real quick, and that’s when they became the big critics of the Bolsheviks, once they that door slammed shut in their face permanently.
And Stalin was a very misunderstood person in a lot of ways, because after 1941, 1942, he returned to patriarchy. There was no more persecution of the church until Khrushchev came in. And it was still a different form of persecution already at that point. But as a matter of fact, when Khrushchev was relieved of power, but a Politburo, one of the points that they interestingly put in for why they were removing him was his persecution of the Orthodox Church.
Asbed: Yeah.
Stas: Seriously, we’re changing at that point. As a fact, there were 17 awards of Hero of the Soviet Union, civilian version. They were given out in Leningrad to priests, who the entire siege of Leningrad kept their churches open and kept the morale of the people up. Given out by Stalin personally.
So there were changes. I mean, it wasn’t the CIA propaganda constantly that was being fed. Things were changing. But the problem with Russia is post-breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russian government said, we’re going to play by international laws.
We’re going to be white and fluffy, and we’re going to follow all the laws. You know, if Armenia chooses this, it’s the Armenian right, we’re not going to interfere. Well, that’s great. That’s beautiful.
Except for one other problem. When everybody else is interfering and you’re not interfering, you always lose. If everybody played by those rules and nobody interferes and it’s the will of the people and they can elect whomever they want, like a conservative in Romania, oh, wait, we canceled those elections. Or, you know, the guys that can bring in, oh, wait, we arrested her and so on and so on.
Obviously, you’re playing against the people who are just changing the rules and moving the goalposts nonstop. You can’t play like that. And I think it’s finally dawning on Moscow, we can’t do this. We either play by the rules they’re actually playing by, or we’re always going to lose.
That’s right.
Asbed: Because at most they’re just paying lip service to the whole thing. That’s, you know, Hobie and I are very familiar with the European values, let’s say. Let me ask you a question about this Trump-Putin summit. Has there been any kind of a breakthrough to warrant a summit that they’ve started talking about since the Steve Witkoff visit to Moscow?
I mean, what triggered the need for this summit? Do you expect any kind of a concession coming from Putin? Is there a concession on the part of Trump? Why do we need a summit?
Stas: Well, let’s begin with the fact Putin is a legalist. He has a law degree. He’s very much a legalist. And when the people think that he’s just a dictator, can do whatever, that’s insanely idiotic.
He cannot. He’s bound by the Constitution. And part of the Constitution, by the way, says that no centimeter of Russian land can ever be ceded to anybody. So when those republics came in, voted to join the Russian Federation, that’s it.
You cannot give away any single square centimeter of it. It’s against the law. And it’s an impeachable offense. And the West is under the impression that, oh, he’s a dictator, just do whatever he wants.
No, he’s not. And he cannot do whatever he wants, and he will follow the Constitution. So when they think that he’ll just write off those areas, he cannot legally do that, and he will not do that. And it would cause huge problems inside of Russia if that happened.
When you ask why the war is taking so long, there are several reasons why the war is taking so long. One, Russia, when it came in, it had half the size of the army of the Ukrainians. It had 120,000 men, including the Eliner-Dener troops. It crushed the first Ukrainian army.
We’re dealing with about the fourth attempted reincarnation of the Ukrainian army right now. The problem is, is Moscow, within three days, put feelers out, let’s talk. Because the whole point of the mission was two points. A, secure LNRDNR in the borders that they were in at that point, not the full provincial borders.
And B, there was no plan on incorporating Zaporozhye or Kherson on any of these territories. B, they wanted neutrality for Ukraine. And they went to talks. And we know what happened with the talks.
When the Americans and the British came in under Boris Johnson and said, you know, we’ll give you everything you want. You’re going to win. So screw the talks. And Zelensky walked away.
And now we have the war. But the problem is now post-mobilization. And the mobilization should have happened in the summer of 22, not the fall of 22. And I was saying that.
And a lot of other people were saying that. A lot of military people were saying that. Russia has the forces to crush Ukraine. Now, there are over 350,000 reserve forces, two tank armies.
They’re sitting there and have not gotten the order to move. The units are being rotated, as opposed to the Ukrainians that have been sitting there for three years on the front without any rotations for the most part, except some of the special units will get pulled out to refit. The Russian military constantly rotates. Every two, three months to a half year, there’ll be a new unit.
Coming in fresh unit while the other one goes to the rear, refits, relaxes, retrains, retrains up. Here’s the problem. The biggest American strategy was to pull Russia in to take all of Ukraine and then wage an endless guerrilla war. Well, most of those people that would want to wage that endless guerrilla war are now either dead or missing limbs.
They’re not going to be waging a guerrilla war. Everybody else is running for the border. And the men that are left are going to be more than happy because they’re hiding. They’re going to be more than happy when this war is over.
They’re not going to wage a guerrilla war. So through this war of attrition, you know… I’ve heard different accounts. The Russian government accounts are actually pretty conservative.
They try not to overcount, but they undercount quite a bit. And they’re saying about one and a half million Ukrainian soldiers and NATO and other mercenaries have been destroyed. Some of the American and other European neutral observers, even like McGregor and other people, They’re quoting at 1.8. And I was watching a priest who was giving a lecture, said, an anti-Zelensky lecture, said, you know, we just got intelligence from the Americans that it’s 2.5 million dead.
And a lot of this is also going from, you know, there’s 400,000 that are missing, officially missing. They’re rotting in the field because Ukrainians don’t want them back, right, for several reasons. I mean, these people are being eaten by pigs, dogs, and rats. I’ve seen a photo of a dead rat that’s physically this big, and that’s just the rat, not the tail.
I mean, these rats are feasting. The people that are being pressed, ganged off the streets, they’re not getting training. They’re good for one attack. And they’re being thrown in as meat.
Or they hold a line that they really can’t hold, which is why the lines are collapsing so quickly. Because once the Russian soldiers get into close combat, The Ukrainians run away because they’re not prepared.
Asbed: Yeah, I remember when Trump mentioned the numbers of dead. It just didn’t make any kind of sense to me. But why do we need a Trump and Putin summit at this point in time?
Stas: The Americans, well, the West, are able to rearm the Ukrainians and pump in Colombian mercenaries. A lot of Colombian mercenaries these days. Drug cartel and Colombian army veterans that are out of a job. So they’ve been pumping in, I mean, literally companies and battalions worth of Colombian.
There are a lot of Poles. The Poles have been rotating their troops through. They’ve taken somewhere between 7,000 to 8,000 dead. They don’t admit to it.
Just in Kursk, there were identified over 2,000 dead Poles. They rotate their troops through to get them a combat experience. But they leave quite a few of them behind dead. And they bury quite a few of them in Poland.
But that’s something the Polish government has been keeping more or less quiet. I don’t think the public actually realizes how many people they’ve actually lost. But there’s quite a few Americans have died. When Lindsey Graham, that warmonger and wanted terrorist in Russia, starts saying, oh, this is the best money.
No Americans are dying. He’s lying through his rotting teeth. There have been lots of Americans dying because, gentlemen, the HIMARS are not crewed by Ukrainians. The Patriot systems are not crewed by Ukrainians.
Whatever Ukrainians were prepared for the Patriot systems are long dead. A lot of those Patriot systems have been destroyed. A Patriot battery is 94 people for all the vehicles, crew, maintenance, etc. It’s 94 people.
The officers take over half a year of training. The mechanics take almost a year of training. You start to really quickly understand that the people that are manning these vehicles and these systems are being handed over aren’t Ukrainians. They may be no longer full time military or they may be hired by some companies. from whatever NATO nation.
But those are NATO people there. And when that Iskandar or that Kinjal comes flying in and destroys everything and burns everything up, those aren’t Ukrainians dying. Those are Americans or Brits or Germans or Poles. And the Heimars, those are Americans being killed.
And quite a few Heimars have been destroyed. And those are all being hit. And I’m not even getting into instructors and other things like that. Or officers, you know, suddenly you have all these officers dying in helicopter crashes.
Or a French general that walked off into the mountains fell off a mountain, you know. The excuses of why these people are dying are getting ridiculous. They’re running out of automobile accidents, I guess, and things like that. But they’re on the battlefield and they’re getting destroyed.
There’s no, nobody’s holding back, not anymore. At first, Moscow was trying to avoid hitting any NATO officers or such because they didn’t want to escalate, which is a big mistake. This is a big mistake. Moscow was coming at this very conservatively.
They didn’t want to do too many rash movements because they were afraid that NATO would get panicked and do something stupid and come in, which is the exact opposite of what NATO would have done. NATO ran away really quickly when the war started because they were expecting the sledgehammer to come down. And when it didn’t come down, when Moscow came in very timidly, I mean, in fact, I’ll tell you this. This is an open secret.
So it’s not really a secret, but it’s not something that’s talked about. The first three months of the war, the Russian military did not have right to open fire on the Ukrainians until the Ukrainians opened fire on the Russian military. So I know guys that were literally watching. The Ukrainians are setting up for an assault, and we can’t do anything.
We legally are not allowed to shoot until we get shot back. So when the assault starts is when we can start shooting back. But preemptively, we can’t do anything because that was the rules of engagement because the negotiations were going on. That all changed.
Obviously. And Russia went into an attrition warfare, which is not a maneuver warfare. It becomes a maneuver warfare when the enemy finally collapses. And then you just go forward and grab all the territory you can grab as the enemy retreats or collapse or surrenders.
And we’re basically at that point already. There are areas behind or south and north of Pokorovsk, these new lines that they’re digging, but they’ve got 12 guys to a kilometer front. You know, you’ve got basically one fire squad that’s trying to hold a kilometer. That’s not exactly anything to be afraid of.
They’re collapsing. They are collapsing. And that’s what Washington is afraid of. I mean, the writing is so obvious on the wall.
Even some of the Ukrainian press is now starting to panic, that the collapse is coming, at least up to the Dniepr. The collapse is definitely coming.
Asbed: So do you think they’re going to be negotiating a final understanding of or closing this conflict?
Stas: You know, I’m worried about something else. I wrote a post today. I haven’t published it yet, but I’m going to an article. I guess late last night by U.S.
I guess it’s still night in the U.S., but where you’re at, that this summit is going to be in Alaska. If I was Vladimir Vladimirovich, I would never step foot in the U.S. under any circumstances, considering the West has a long, long history of betrayal, and Trump just looked the Iranians in the eyes and negotiated while setting them up for mass murder for three months ago. You can’t trust. I’m sorry, but, you know, maybe I’m being paranoid, but I would never freaking trust the U.S. government, especially considering the West is obsessed with Putin because they think if we get rid of Putin, all of our problem will solve.
No, you’re fighting Russia. You’re not fighting Putin. Putin is just the face that the Russian people are behind. And what they don’t understand is you get rid of Putin, you’re not going to get a Yeltsin.
You’re going to get somebody who’s going to be hardcore and is going to turn your life into a living hell. And it’s not going to hold back. Putin is holding back a lot. And it shocks Westerners when I tell them, you know, the biggest criticism of Putin in Russia is he’s too soft on the West.
What? Like, you don’t understand the anger that’s built up in Russia over these years. So Putin’s probably the best gift you’ve got right now. And if you get rid of him, the Russian government’s not going to collapse.
But you’re going to have a real war on your hands, possibly up to a nuclear war. and but i don’t think they understand that i don’t think they want to understand
Asbed: that so i’m uh okay yeah i’m just trying to understand why they’re they want to
Hovik: meet yeah august 15th is the purported date so i guess we’ll we’ll have to wait for a week to find out but in the little time that we have uh stars i hope you don’t mind me bringing us back to the south caucasus uh because We said earlier that Ukraine has dominated the Kremlin’s focus at the expense of the South Caucasus. I think that’s not a controversial opinion, right? Even Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Valdai club, He admitted as much to us. And in my opinion, nowhere could this be seen better than the signing ceremony that occurred in D.C., with the U.S. now inserting itself into the region.
Now, you opened the discussion by saying that, by going to the 1820s, and I want to just underscore that because I think Armenians have enjoyed a centuries-long friendship with Russians. And unfortunately, like, well, maybe fortunately or unfortunately, many Armenians still think that this region is important to them. But to be honest, and I’m saying this from an Armenian perspective, the past five years have tested this belief because even after the 2020 war in May, June 2021, when Pashinyan was getting re-elected, it wasn’t like Putin was… very much anti-Pashinyan at the time. Pashinyan was saying the right things.
He was meeting with Aliyev and Pashinyan under Russian mediation. So I think that at that time, Russia felt that things were still in control. It still had peacekeeping troops in Nagorno-Karabakh, even though they were on a five-year leash, to be honest. So that’s one point.
I mean, I just want to ask, has Russia missed the train in terms of the ability to be engaged in the region in a realistic way? Because Nagorno-Karabakh is gone. You know, Turkey is making greater and greater inroads. You talked about Adjaria before, I believe, on a different podcast.
So what is… needed for Russia to bring back its leverage in the Caucasus, because to be honest, I can’t see any specific signs. And it becomes easier and easier for Armenian leadership to bring up the justification that there is little… I mean, okay, we have a big economic relationship with Russia. That’s the only thing that remains nowadays.
We have a gas, we have a need for energy, but with this zong is recorded, I’m just afraid that next thing Armenians will be fed the idea that, hey, you can buy Azeri gas, as if our dependence on Azerbaijan was not enough. And as ridiculous as that idea sounds to me, I think that that’s maybe what Pashinyan does next. And then also, you know, I just want to mention one more thing that Azerbaijan has one of these demands that you must change your constitution and the constitution should not contradict with the peace treaty. And the peace treaty purportedly says that there should be no troops of any third nation.
So Armenia’s membership in the CSTO now is in question too. So I think that’s also coming. So what is needed for Russia to, or how do you see Russia making inroads into the Caucasus again and reclaiming its vast sort of influence here?
Stas: Well, on the one side, Russia is making inroads to Georgia. That’s the next obvious border. And without Georgia, there really is no… Russia has no inroads to Armenia, realistically speaking.
There’s no logistical… There’s no logistical paths short of going through Georgia. Russia is in the South Caucasus, whether it likes it or not, because Dagestan is in the South Caucasus, and the next target will, of course, be Dagestan. It already is.
The Azerbaijanis are already trying to rock that boat. You’re right. As I said, Russia was trying to play the white and fluffy, which is a very, very wrong approach. And I think they’ve figured that out, that we can’t keep doing this, because we’re playing reactionary, and we’re not leading this…
We have no strategy, basically. We’re floating in the water, and wherever the wind is blowing, we’re reacting to that. And that’s not an approach. Russia’s biggest ally in this area is obviously Iran.
And between Russia and Iran, the Caucasus are squeezed. If Georgia joins… Yeah, there’s something else. You know, the Americans and the Brits, they still want Georgia, but they flat out, you know, three months ago, the U.S. signed a bill to bring democracy to Georgia.
Translation, we don’t agree with the choice of the people, so we’re going to bring you our choice. Two weeks later, the British signed the exact same bill, and a month or so ago, the EU passed the same. I mean, almost the wording is almost the same on all of these. They’re just cut and paste, right?
We’re going to bring democracy to Georgians. Translation, all you people in power now, we’re going to get rid of you. And if we have to do, we’ll kill you. If we don’t, we’ll put you in jail.
We’re going to get rid of you. And we’re going to take over. So that’s kind of a flashing light to the Georgians, too, that, yeah, you know, you can still say we went into Europe, but the Europeans aren’t going to take you with you in it. They’re going to get rid of you, your damaged product, as far as they’re concerned.
They’re not going to forgive you. So if you want to stay in power or even stay alive, There’s only one player in the caucus that’s got your back. But that with Armenia, but even, you know, the problem in Armenia, sorry to say this, but it’s the Armenians. Russia cannot rule Armenia.
Russia cannot do anything unless the Armenian people decide to do something. If the Armenian people revolt, they overthrow a man that is destroying the Armenian church, who’s already promised, because I’ve read this out of Azerbaijani press, where the head Mufti is exclaiming, we’re about to get all of our holy sites back in Armenia, because we’re going to flood Armenia with Azerbaijanis. You have a government that’s hell-bent on the extermination of the Armenian nation in Armenia. If the Armenian people sit passively and do nothing, there’s nothing Russia can do.
If they rebuild, they will get backing. That’s just how it is. Whether or not Moscow says that, they won’t have a choice but to back. So it all comes down to what will the people do.
Hovik: Okay. I’m glad you mentioned Georgia. So the economic communication between Armenia and Russia relies entirely on the on this narrow land in Georgia, which is closed part of the year because of weather, sometimes because of political reasons or whatever, they’re making constructions. So we have been very much interested in the reopening of the Abkhaz railway, which got closed after the Russian-Georgian war.
And, you know, you mentioned that Russia, I mean, Georgia is the main way that Russia would probably seek to increase its influence in the Caucasus. But at the same time, we’re talking with a lot of Georgians who are saying that, yeah, I mean, we are trying to remain balanced, but ain’t no way we’re opening the Abkhaz railway. So I want to say, what kind of diplomatic wizardry do you think it would take for… the railway from, I believe, Sukhumi to be opened so that at least we can have a reliable way to ship goods to Russia. What are your thoughts?
Stas: I fully understand the Georgian point of view in this case. It’s a quandary because You know, you have to have, obviously, you have to have checkpoints. So where do you put your checkpoint? If the Georgians put their checkpoint on the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan, they’ve automatically acknowledged Azerbaijan as a separate entity.
So they can’t do it there. And nobody’s going to let the Georgians put the checkpoint on the Russian-Azerbaijani border. Obviously, the Azerbaijanis won’t do it. So they’re in a quandary that I don’t, the only way out of it, and Moscow’s made some noises in this direction, is to reestablish the three plus one talks.
Now, the Georgian 2008 war, Moscow had proposed the three plus one talks to Saakashvili, and he accepted. The three plus one was Georgia, Abkhazia, Azerbaijan, I’m sorry, Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia plus Russia. And to form, you know, when Adjaria reentered fully into Georgia, reentered as an autonomous province. And the whole point was to do the same thing with the South Ossetians and the Abkhazians.
Reform Georgia into this confederacy, basically, with these three guys as autonomous provinces or a high level of autonomy. And Saakashvili agreed to the talks. And then comes Condoleezza Rice and her little horse, her little nightmare horse. And once she leaves, we get the 2008 war.
Because the last thing the American government wants is peace to break out. God forbid peace breaks out. You know, they were in shock when the Chinese brought the Saudis and Iranians to peace talks and they agreed on things. Because, you know, we lose our leverage the moment peace breaks out.
And who do we sell weapons to and who do we make our vassals if they’re all living peacefully and they don’t need us? They’re going to have to need us. It’s like the Charlie Chaplin film where Charlie Chaplin hires is selling glass panes for windows. And he hires a bunch of kids to go run around and throw rocks into windows.
And then he comes along and sells the glass of Spain. It’s the same thing. Americans are playing the exact same game, sort of British and French. So Moscow is making those noises in that direction again.
South East Asia may be an impossibility, particularly because North East Asia is on the other side of the mountains, and the South East Asia is going to be unified with the North East Asia. Abkhazia is a whole different entity. And I could foresee, under certain circumstances, Abkhazia being… pushed or dragged into a confederacy with Georgia. Particularly because a lot of people in Moscow, honestly speaking, are also sick and tired of paying for Abkhazia.
It’s just how it is. That’s why we have the energy turn off on Abkhazia. Because the Abkhazians weren’t letting Russian businesses in. They’re confiscating property, doing all kinds of crazy things, but they’re fully living off of Moscow.
And it came out that in the 30 years, supporting Apposia has cost Moscow over 100 billion rubles. What does it give back for that? And that’s a big question. And all politicians eventually ask that question.
So what are we getting back from this investment? So I could see Abkhazia under certain circumstances getting, but again, the Georgian government would have to have formal diplomatic relations with Russia and things. So there’s a lot of things that would have to happen before that. But if that happens, I could actually see that happening, going down the line maybe in the next three, four, five years as a possibility.
Asbed: Do you think this government, Ivanishvili’s government, is likely to make those diplomatic overtures?
Stas: I think they are. They can’t move very quickly because they still have a very strong American-owned base in Georgia as part of the population. but they are building on it. So I think eventually, I heard earlier, maybe at the end of summer, beginning of fall, but obviously that hasn’t happened, that they would start talks and directly setting up embassies and recognizing each other formally. Informally, I mean, the Russian border is open for all Georgians.
No visas are required, no registration, except for where they’re staying. There’s no time limit, and Moscow’s rediscovered soft power. It’s taken a long time. But Moscow rediscovered soft power, for example, opened up a lot of positions in universities for Georgian students, paid for by the Russian government.
This is all a projection of soft power. Like I said, unfortunately, it’s taken so damn long to do this. There are a lot of things, a lot of events have happened that could have been avoided. But things are moving in the right direction, which is a good sign, which is a very good sign.
So I think with the Georgians, yes, whether Armenia can survive that long, that first and foremost depends on Armenians. And believe me, the Georgians are worried. I know guys in the Georgian government, they are worried. Because if Armenia falls, Azerbaijan, or Turkey, the Georgians know their history, at least the people in power.
The university students and so on don’t because they’ve been brainwashed by Tsarist textbooks. But the people in power, the older people, they know the history. And they know what the Turks are capable of. And they are not exactly.
They may work with them. And they’re working as that middleman between the Russian Turkish trade. But they don’t trust them. And they will understand the things that are happening in Adjaria right now.
And it’s got them worried pretty damn hard. And properly worried.
Asbed: All right. I guess we’re going to leave it there. These topics can go on forever and they’re very interesting. Thank you, Mr.
Krapivnik. I appreciate your time and your insight.
Hovik: Thank you. Same. Thank you very much.
Asbed: Yep. All right. Well, that’s our show today. This episode was recorded on August 9, 2025.
Actually, for me, it started on August 8, and it’s now August 9. We’ve been talking with Mr. Stanislav Krapivnik, who is a former U.S. Army officer, supply chain exec, and military political expert now based in Russia.
He was born in Lugansk during the Soviet times. He migrated to the U.S. as a child. He served in the U.S. Army.
He did not like what was going on in the former Yugoslavia, so he quit and returned to Russia. Mr. Krapivnik is an independent contractor and consults and appears in the international media in his areas of expertise in military matters, NATO, America, history, economics, and supply chains. For more information on any of the participants, including myself and Hovig, you can go to podcasts.groong.org / episode-number and check all the links out.
Hovik: Before we go, one last request. Please consider subscribing to us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It’s free, it’s easy, and it helps us out a great deal. And of course, commenting, liking, and sharing our stuff definitely gives us a boost that we need.
So we’d really appreciate any kind of support you can give in that direction. Thank you very much.
Asbed: I’m Asbed Bedrossian in Los Angeles.
Hovik: And I’m Hovik Manucharyan in Gavar, Armenia.
Asbed: Take care. We’ll talk to you soon.
Hovik: Have a great day.