Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Groong’s Week in Review for May 17, 2026. Hello, Hovik.
Hovik: How are you doing? So far, so good. I mean, considering all the circumstances and all the craziness that’s going on in Armenia and elections, which we’ll talk about.
Asbed: Well, let’s start as far away from Armenia as we can then, and then migrate over into Armenia. Let’s start with this much ballyhooed Donald Trump-Xi Jinping summit that happened in Beijing on May 14 and 15. And this was Trump’s second visit. The first one was in 2017 during his first administration.
And this time we saw a president of the United States that was actually weakened by this prolonged war on Iran. And he also has, of course, political and economic domestic problems. So he didn’t look like himself as far as I’m concerned. There were some good things, I guess.
There were some agricultural trade agreements that were made for about $250 billion. There was a Board of Trade that was agreed to.
Hovik: Boards. Trump likes boards. Is it anything like the Board of Peace and is Pashinyan part of it?
Asbed: Well, who knows if Pashinyan is on it or not, but maybe Armenia can help China and the US pay each other’s tariffs or something. What do you think?
Hovik: I have no idea, but since we talked about Armenia, I have to say that Pashinyan recently, we knew that the Board of Peace was, you know, there’s this mandatory $1 billion contribution that states have to make, and Armenia is a founding member. And recently, Pashinyan said that Armenia should make a financial contribution if it wants to take part in the activities of the Board of Peace. I don’t know what that means. Does that mean that Armenia is going to fork over a billion dollars to this thing?
It’s crazy to even think about it.
Asbed: Well, you know, I haven’t picked up on that and I haven’t slammed Pashinyan on that because I kind of don’t believe that that commitment is a real commitment. It was something that I think that I feel that Trump just announced domestically to show that the other people are jumping in and trying to contribute. Who knows? For all I know, the $60 million that Armenia is sending to Lebanon so that they can help humanitarian issues and stuff like that could be part of the commitment that Armenia has made.
I just have no idea. Back to the Board of Trade, China also agreed to order 200 Boeing aircraft from the United States but don’t celebrate yet that sounds like a lot but the markets were expecting 500 and so they were not pleased with 200 and I think on Friday, the markets went down when we heard that news. For reference China also decided to order 150 aircraft from Canada, I think the Airbus aircraft that were manufactured in Canada. So it’s not much more than that from the United States, which is a much larger country.
And then a joint investment board was also set up. Another board? No, I knew you were going to say that. There has been no announcement that Pashinyan is joining this board yet.
Hovik: Pashinyan loves boards.
Asbed: It gives him more opportunity to get out of Armenia.
Hovik: And being a washing board for Aliyev as well. But look, Asbed, I think that this whole China visit proved that the US effectively has lost its stature, it has lost its position in the world. And all of these announcements seemed like minor, very minor things. And the major issue coming out of China was that Trump announced that China had agreed on the Strait of Hormuz to be And he portrayed it as if this was, you know, that China is against Iran charging fees for transit of ships.
But, you know, Trita Parsi had a really nice article about it on the Quincy Institute website, where he’s basically interpreting it as, you know, no, actually, China is not against Iran charging fees for China. The strait being open means ships flowing, goods flowing through the strait, and if fees have to be paid, I think China is principally not against it.
Asbed: The statement that I saw was actually very simple, and all it said is that according to Trump, they basically agreed to end the war, open Hormuz, and for China to not provide military aid to Iran. That was a summary of the extent of the agreement between the two superpowers. It didn’t say anything. So they said, yes, open Hormuz, but they didn’t say, is it okay to let the flow be charged, not be charged?
China did not agree to any of those super details. But I think Trump was so hard up for some kind of an agreement, some kind of a win or some kind of a deal to be announced that he just basically said, we’ve agreed to these things, et cetera, et cetera. I can tell you that China put up Once again, reiterated its big red line about Taiwan. They said, you know, we can’t even go there.
So it seems like Trump, to me, waffled on this and basically decided not to provide Taiwan with a $14 billion military aid that he was already planning on. You know, that may happen, that may not happen, but at least at this point, I think he’s backed off from that. China refused to lift the bans on selling some of the rare earths that they are withholding that are very important for new energy vehicle markets. I think this is going to be interesting to watch because there have been some articles that say that the TRIPP, the Trump Route that goes through Armenia actually has some mineral rights also contained and Armenia has some rare…
I’m not sure if we have rare earths, but we do have molybdenum. A certain percentage of the world supply of molybdenum is in Armenia. On the flip side, the US also withheld a number of things. They didn’t lift any bans on technology that goes to China, especially these NVIDIA H200 chips.
Ultimately, I really think that these things are just going to cancel each other out. They’re finally going to agree that you’ll get so much rare earths and you’ll get so many NVIDIA chips until China has come around to inventing their own H200s, H300s or something. But you summarized some of the disagreements that we are seeing about China, and I think those are major disagreements. So in a sense, I feel like Trump went to China with his hands open, did not get a lot of arms.
He’s back. I’m not entirely sure how it’s going to go. But I’m hearing that he is convening his military aides and military advisors and people like analysts like Trita Parsi actually do expect that the war is going to restart. Trump is going to reignite that in the coming days.
Hovik: Yeah, that’s a big elephant in the room. And it doesn’t seem there is any resolution to the war in Iran. And in light of that article in The Atlantic, where even some of the most prominent neocons are saying that the US has been defeated, it’s just Puzzling to me what the strategy of the US is, but for those in the region, I think we should brace for more fighting. Okay, Hovik, move us a little closer to Armenia.
The countdown for the gentle divorce or separation between Russia and Armenia has started. We saw shocking news over the last few weeks, of course, and even starting with Pashinyan’s visit to Moscow in early May, where Putin gave him a dressing down. I think that continues, and Putin has promised to put the agenda of Armenians sitting on two chairs, one in the EU and one in the Eurasian Economic Union, the EAEU, on the agenda of the EAEU Summit on May 28th.
And he said, even if Pashinyan doesn’t attend, In Pashinyan’s stead, there will be Mher Grigoryan, who I think by default has his neck hung very low, and he will continue in that position at that summit. The most uninspiring government official I’ve ever seen, just a yes man.
He’ll listen to Lukashenko giving him a dressing down He’ll listen to Putin and all the other members of the EU talking shit about Armenia It’s crazy when you think about all of the potential disastrous consequences of Armenia’s moves whether it is cheap Russian energy that Armenia is enjoying the ability to export goods to Russia amounting to I think more than 30% of Armenia’s exports.
Asbed: There have been a number of sudden moves on the part of Russia to do sanitary inspections on Armenian goods. Do you think that these things are related or is there suddenly a gap in the quality of Armenian products going to Russia?
Hovik: As I’ve said before, Russia doesn’t have soft power, but this can be considered Russia’s soft power, you know. Hard power, they probably consider like, you know, a few Kinzhal missiles thrown at you, so we should be glad that it’s only sanitary inspections. And, I mean, this week… All of this is not new, but this week even Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said, essentially, spelled it out that Armenia risks losing all EEU or EAEU trade privileges on its European integration path.
Now, I have to say, I don’t want Armenia to suffer, but if this is the extent to which Russia will go before elections, then it’s not enough, right?
Because Pashinyan will be able to talk his crazy talk and to continue to fan the flame of anti-Russian rhetoric and we are seeing simply like threats and I don’t think two weeks is enough for Russia to really show Armenia how like you know things will be and after June perhaps then Pashinyan will have a free hand to if if God forbid he he gets reelected which he you know if he does then it will be through massive falsifications then I’m not sure what options Russia can have other than saying, okay, act on the threats then.
What have they been doing all this time since Armenia has been announcing these intentions to join the EU, even passing a law about it? Some in the opposition are actually suspicious that Russia, by announcing these things, is even actually helping Washington trying to increase the anti-Russian rhetoric and portraying the Armenian opposition as pro-Russian simply for wishing to remain in the EAEU and get their benefits.
Asbed: Well, it’s a double-edged sword. Everything cuts two ways. So then you have Pashinyan and you have the opposition. Everybody can spin it in the direction that they want it.
I’m not saying anything about the opposition shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t do that. I’m really saying that Yeah, there are advantages and disadvantages, and each side can say, oh, look what’s going on. The Russians are killing us off. And the other side can say, you know, we should be leaving Russia, we should be leaving Europe.
It’s just kind of, you know, I think the Armenian needs to see through all of this polemic.
Hovik: Yeah, I think the opposition actually, this is important because we’re now getting into election rhetoric, but no one in the opposition has said that they will cut ties with Europe. I think all major opposition parties have said that we should have balanced relations with all major states, but it is an EU that is imposing on Armenia anti-Russian conditions.
In order to join the EU, you have to sign up to all the anti-Russian measures that they have imposed, which the Eurovision contest that happened in Armenia earlier this They also underscored during that contest, you know, there are like, I don’t know, 50 or 30 something points that are principle that all European states must agree on, that the European Commission is insisting, and many of those have to do with sanctions against Russia. What was Putin when Armenia passed the Rome Statute, essentially guaranteeing or signing up to arrest Putin if he ever sets his foot in Armenia?
Russia should have acted on this much earlier, that’s all I’m saying. But maybe this is a good segue into our elections and the craziness that we have to talk about. Sure, sure.
Asbed: Well, I’ll start with the ruling Civil Contract party. They’re facing intense backlash for Weaponizing State Resources to Inflate Campaign Rallies. The local watchdogs have documented Aragatsotn’s deputy governor directing school teachers, principals, and students, minors, to leave class and hold party flags and propaganda. Critics have condemned the exploitation as a criminal violation and Pashinyan has himself promised some investigation into this.
He’s even come out and said that he is firing some of these teachers, which I have no idea how the Prime Minister of the country has the right to fire certain employees who don’t report to him. But anyway, and then you have the CEC, the Central Electoral Commission, responding that… I actually do not remember exactly how they responded because it was so meek and passive. It feels like they just woke up and made a statement, went back to sleep.
Hovik: Look, when you say CEC, you give it a sense of officialdom. You should understand who is heading the CEC right now.
It’s a long-time Pashinyan employee, Vahagn Hovakimyan, who was his aide, one of his employees in his newspaper when Pashinyan was you know the head of the newspaper he still owns a newspaper but it’s so it’s still running but when Pashinyan went to the National Assembly in 2013 or so he went in as the aide to Pashinyan when Pashinyan usurped power in 2018 he also was elected as a member of parliament and In parliament, when there was a vote to elect the chair of the CEC, he cast a vote for himself, even though the opposition argues that this is not allowed by law, he cast a deciding vote for himself to be the chair of the CEC.
So it’s all filled with Pashinyan loyalists.
Asbed: So with all these wide scale reports that there are underage kids who are being pushed out of class to do propaganda for the Civil Contract, do we have real proof that this is going on?
Hovik: Of course we do. shared a recording of a teacher berating her students to go to the rallies to not make her look bad and she also said that it was imposed from above we see the structure right there is the governor or the head of the Mars tells all the Mars structures and also even from the Ministry of Education I mean I think that In all Armenian elections, this administrative resource has been used, but never so blatantly, I think, because Pashini has done more to stack all of the hype seats and power with his loyalists. in our show notes to that recording, but also there was another watchdog or monitoring group that claimed, and this is by Transparency International, so it’s not like an opposition group, that claimed they witnessed multiple instances where the schoolteachers and principals gave loud and strict instructions, and I’m using loud and strict in quotes, that’s their word, to students to participate in rallies and it’s evident you can see all if it wasn’t for these teachers for the state employees and for students that accounts for 90% of the participants in his rallies and it’s plain to the naked eye and only the you know the The international monitors are probably going to be blind to it.
If anything, it will be like a footnote in their report that proclaims the Armenian elections. Yeah, it’s concerning. We’re concerned by some violations, but overall it was okay.
Asbed: I fully believe that that’s going to be the gist of their report. You know what I’m amazed at, Hovik, as I watch all these things happening, for a guy who has made his time in office on the basis of the formers, the nakhkins, being corrupt and being this way or that way, he is trying to – he’s leading a campaign that is right back into Soviet days. Prior to the Nazis, prior to everybody.
I mean, some of these things where you’re getting these kids flying flags and colors and doing all these dances and everything during campaigns, pretending that there’s democracy, pretending that there’s popular support for this, just straight back to Soviet days.
Hovik: What’s funny is that he publicly said that I have told these four teachers to resign. First, is he really pretending that we’re all dumb and don’t know that most of his headcount in his rallies is provided by these schools? And number two, what right does he have to tell teachers to resign?
Asbed: He doesn’t have a right. He just has the police that can show up. And well, anyway, so that’s exactly what I want to talk about. Law enforcement, selective justice.
And while government infractions are going unpunished, voter fraud crackdowns and raids are almost exclusively at the opposition rivals. It never happens through Civil Contract. A primary example occurred on May 13 when the police raided the offices of Strong Armenia. Detaining Supporters In A Move That The Opposition Slammed As State Sponsored
Hovik: Intimidation To Stifle Them Basically Yeah And Even Armenia Alliance, or Hayastan Dashinq, members were detained I Mean We’re Talking About Tens of people who are organizers in the party without… I am very sure that in the end they will be found, you know, they will be released somehow. But by tying up those people, it’s…
Asbed: In the run-up of the elections, two weeks before the elections. Amazing.
Hovik: and Pashinyan’s rhetoric is so vile that you know on that note of threatening to fire people right he also talks bad about like all of the opposition leaders. We talked last week that he threatened to bring Gagik Tsarukyan’s son from Belarus and make him kneel in front of him.
Asbed: And… Oh, Hovik, just today we saw a video. You should talk about that. And of all things, last week we were interviewing Tatevik Soghoyan, the lawyer.
Her mom had an altercation on video with Pashinyan.
Hovik: Armine Soghoyan. approached Pashinyan during one of his rallies and she told him what many Armenians, many patriotic Armenians feel. She accused him of stealing Artsakh. She accused him for the death of so many young Armenian soldiers and military officers. She said that he doesn’t even know how many of them are there.
And Pashinyan just blew his gasket, basically. In his response, he vowed to make the opposition leaders kneel in front of him. He really likes that… Yeah, he likes that visual.
He mentioned all of them by name. He said, I will make them kneel in front of me. And then he even went as far to say as he will… I don’t know if YouTube is going to block us, but he said that he would kill them.
I mean, without any qualifiers, repeatedly, he said, I’m going to kill them. It’s really interesting whether he will get reprimanded by his own party which he said that his party has passed ethics rules so that they don’t curse or use vile rhetoric like that I’m going to be interested to see what the observers have to say Did he get reprimanded? Did the police show up and arrest him? If any of the opposition members said something like that, they would be thrown in jail immediately.
Asbed: And we have an example for that one, Hovik. You know, let’s talk about this blogger, Artak Avetisyan. He went on a live and literally said something to the effect that you’re the government. Why are you campaigning every day?
Come and let us meet, you know, Yekeq tesnenq, right? And I’ll show you how we welcome you. What happens? A couple hours later, police walk in and he’s under one or two month detainment.
Hovik: I don’t know exactly what happened. The courts immediately approved his one month pretrial detention. We frequently talk about this. The Pashinyan regime is abusing pretrial detention.
I believe it is number two in all of the Council of Europe. in terms of the ratio of people in pretrial detention to people who are serving jail time because of a judgment. It’s crazy and it’s one-sided An Artsakhci approached him and saying basically something like, you know, all these years you brought Arayik Harutyunyan on us and you support him. And if you’re talking about corruption, he’s sort of, you know, the head of the corruption there. Now Arayik Harutyunyan is in Baku, so I’m not going to talk too much about that.
But Pashinyan, at that comment, He went crazy. He said, get the hell out of here, you Artsakhtsis. He went on a vile anti-Artsakhtsi series of rants, and he even did that when that woman approached him. He kept saying, all these people with Artsakhtsi accents, what do you want from me? truly campaigning on a hatred of Artsakhtsis which he himself has cultivated with U.S. support over all these years with Western support ever since the 2000s when he was part of the first Levante Petrosyan’s campaign and Ashut Balayan’s campaign he has this has been their tool set and he even to Arthur Ossipian he said Why are you not dead?
He said, why are you not dead? If you care about the war so much, why didn’t you go and die in the war? And that’s another common false narrative where if you look at the proportion of people who died in the war Based on their total population, the proportion of Artsakhtsis who died in both wars was much higher than the proportion of people who came from the rest of Armenia. And only when the time came to ensure the protection of their genetic fund Did they decide to emigrate en masse?
And it’s so, so reprehensible that the leader of Armenia is blaming the victim here. Pashinyan deserted Artsakh, you know. He vowed not to militarily get involved against Azerbaijan.
Asbed: Yeah, yeah. And I just want to say one thing here about why aren’t some people dead or whatever. What was it on September 19, 2021 of 2023 when the war started on Artsakh? Those people who were starved for nine months in the Artsakh blockade fought for one or two days against the Azerbaijani invasion of their country.
And as many so-called well-trained Azerbaijani army people were killed as there were Artsakh soldiers who were killed. I mean, those soldiers fought valiantly. in the last couple of days before Arayik Harutyunyan decided, well, actually it was Samvel Shahramanyan who decided to- Shahramanyan. Samvel Shahramanyan who decided to lay down, go talk to the Azerbaijanis and accept the terms of surrender.
Hovik: I mean, that’s what Armenia was forcing them. That’s what Armenia was- Yeah,
Asbed: the Pashinyan basically forced their hand, abandoned them because you can’t have a country of 150,000 people fighting a country of 10 million. So-
Hovik: We can be we opinionated on this podcast and we have our own political viewpoints but I can honestly say that for most honorable Armenians Pashinyan is a wild creature and you can see that even from his videos where people are refusing his handouts like he gives these maps you can see that when there was this video where he entered the shop and the shop owner and he asked the shop owner how are you the shop owner said I’m bad and he said why he goes because I saw you and he goes okay well Pashinyan said I wish you good luck and the shop owner said well I wish you bad luck and it was all on cameras
Asbed: I have not seen a lot of good videos. I haven’t seen any good videos on the pro-Pashinyan side, to be honest. People, visit after visit just ends up in these horrible altercations. Can I just mention one more thing?
Hovik: Sure. One more thing. During this campaign, so far I think Pashinyan had given a clue that he was going to give the three enclaves in Armenia to Azerbaijan. But he spelled it out.
When another protester approached him and said, what are you going to give away next? He goes, those enclaves, and he used the Azerbaijani names for them. to Azerbaijan, and we have Artsvashen. I mean, Artsvashen is a secluded enclave. It is not near any strategic Azerbaijani roads, and it’s not even clear how Armenia would defend something like that.
And I’m pretty sure Aliyev would even never leave Artsvashen,
Asbed: but… You would need some kind of a corridor to Artsvashen to actually have a manageable Artsvashen.
Hovik: Yeah, but the so-called enclaves, in the northeast of Armenia are sitting on strategic locations. Actually, Armenia has already begun moving the gas pipeline in negotiations with Georgia, and they said that it’s related to the border delimitation and demarcation process. We know that, but on the western side of Armenia, the Tigranashen is extremely strategic for Armenia. You have to drive through that in order to go south.
Now there’s a detour road which goes through a lot of mountainous territory and it increases the time from Armenia, from Yerevan to Syunik. So if Tigranashen is given away to Azerbaijan then Armenians would have to go take a detour through Vedi and that increases I think that adds like 20-30 minutes to the drive.
Asbed: There’s no logical map reason, there’s no real There’s no reason why these concessions need to be made, except that Aliyev says so and Pashinyan concedes them. And these are demands that are strategic in nature. They are made so that Armenia’s internal integrity is damaged. It is more difficult for one part of Armenia to connect to another part of Armenia, and all of it becomes suddenly under strategic heights that Azerbaijan is going to control.
That’s why these little enclaves are so important for them because it damages Armenia. It’s not that there’s another 100 square feet or whatever. Hovike, I do want to get back to the election stuff because Pashinyan is also actively targeting diaspora voting blocs. He confidently declared recently that over 65% of Armenian citizens in Russia will vote for his party.
He claimed the statistic was based on personal video calls. However, given that this diaspora’s historical criticism of his governance, I’m not sure where he’s pulling this information. Do you know anything about why he thinks that 65% of Armenians in Russia are going to vote for him?
Hovik: I think one of the alt media people uses the word bovine excrement a lot. And I think that this is basically pure bovine excrement. The people in diaspora, I wouldn’t say they overwhelmingly are different than in Armenia, but I would say they are more tending towards being against Pashinyan, especially since they don’t have anything to gain from it. The only people supporting Pashinyan today are state employees or people who lose their jobs if they didn’t toe the party line.
And that’s why there’s more support of Pashinyan in Armenia. So I’m not aware of any support for Pashinyan in any of the diasporas, but especially in the Russian diaspora. Why would Russian citizens support that? Yeah, yeah.
Asbed: Well, so basically a summary is that there’s widespread use of administrative resources by Pashinyan side and by leveraging the full power of the police and regional governors, exploiting public school systems, enforcing selective arrests against political rivals and shielding themselves against a passive Central Electoral Commission. They’re executing a heavy-handed campaign, basically. For the opposition and independent watchdog groups, the current political environment lacks the fundamental tenets of a transparent, fair and free democratic election.
Hovik: You remember a month ago when the Pashinyan police raided and arrested supporters of Strong Armenia because they wiretapped them?
Asbed: Yeah, I was going to say, which one? There have been so many of them.
Hovik: and they were discussing giving away pants and clothes to some of their supporters who were very poor and for that they considered that electoral bribes and they said well you’re bribing voters by giving them pants meanwhile in the town of Tallinn Tavros Sapeyan or Tavros Sapeyan who is the mayor of Tallinn He basically gave away about $30,000 to low-income families in that town. And that is a clear bribe. Even according to law, there is a ban on any philanthropic activities during the pre-election period. There was a complaint against him and guess what the courts found or guess what the anti-corruption committee found?
Asbed: I think they said something like it’s his own money, he can do whatever he wants. Was that part of the verdict?
Hovik: I think the anti-corruption committee statement says Tavros Sapien made the decision to provide social assistance not as a party member Or as an election candidate, but as a community head. Anyway, this is what we have to deal with. Exactly, exactly.
Asbed: Okay, Hovik, let’s move on. I think there’s actually a little bit of substance that we are talking about in this campaign. The previous one actually came from Kocharyan, and this one that I want you to talk about also comes from Kocharyan. Tell us about what he thinks as far as security guarantees go for any kind of a peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Hovik: Both opposition parties actually Strong Armenia and Armenia Alliance have said that they need to seek security guarantees from external powers because Armenia just is not powerful enough right now and especially with the tandem of Turkey and Azerbaijan acting you know working hand in hand I thought you were gonna say the
Asbed: tandem of Aliyev and Pashinyan Armenia is too weak
Hovik: yeah yeah there should be you know what those during the Soviet time there was these posters Marx, Engels, Lenin yeah for the social it should be like you know Erdogan, Aliyev and Pashinyan as the three that should be his campaign poster but that’s right Going back to Kocharyan’s policy, it’s pretty reasonable, right? He says that Armenia needs an enforceable system of big power international security guarantees involving United States, Russia, and France. I mean, France, for God’s sake, France has been, claims to be a friend of Armenia.
And now everyone is just, Pashinyan is giving them, is letting them off the hook, essentially, by not pressing for security guarantees for any peace. And in fact, Pashinyan explicitly says that Azerbaijan is our security guarantor. Can you believe that?
Asbed: Azerbaijan cannot be our security guarantor. The sad part is that just last year, I think December 1st was the official day of dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group, to which the United States, Russia, and France were the co-chairs of. And this was the group that was tasked with dealing with the cause of Artsakh, essentially. And now Kocharyan is saying they have to deal with the cause of Armenia, of all things,
Hovik: which is amazing.
Asbed: All right, well, let’s close. I have one final topic that I just want to mention. There’s not that much information, but there was an article that mentioned that the Armenian Church in Javakhk was vandalized. The Surb Nshan Church, St.
Mark Armenian Church in Akhaltskha, located in the Armenian-populated Samtskhe-Javakheti region of Georgia, was recently vandalized by unknown assailants. They entered the church and removed numerous religious relics, photographs, and items. Images and videos shared online showed that these items that were discarded on the ground and near a trash bin outside the church grounds. Most of them, Father Hakob Sahakyan, who is the spiritual leader of Akhaltskha, explained that the vast majority of these artifacts were of Armenian origin.
But he was also wise enough to say that we should not jump to conclusions because there’s always the possibility that it’s like a false flag operation to throw the Armenian and Georgian communities at each other and sow discord. So he basically has applied to the authorities to find the offending parties and deal with them within the context of the law of the region. And that’s where we stand. I just want to show that the Armenian Church remains under attack in many places.
Hovik: That’s what happens when you have a weak Armenian state. I’m pretty sure that the government of Armenia is now going to raise this issue in their bilateral negotiations with Georgians. It is a very sensitive moment and Armenia is weak right now. And we have very few friends in the region, right?
And we consider Georgia our friend. Georgia and Iran are the only borders that we have that are open right now due to the blockade by Turkey and Azerbaijan. But there is a strong Nationalist Movement in Georgia, especially within the Georgian Orthodox Church. Many Armenian churches are not recognized as such by the Georgian church and are used as Georgian churches.
This could have been Azerbaijanis doing a provocation, right? This could have been the local Azerbaijanis. They’re motivated by anti-Armenian speeches by Aliyev, but we have to deal with this in a diplomatic manner, but I’m not seeing how Armenia is dealing with this.
Asbed: Okay, I know we’re leaving a number of topics on the floor here, but I gotta jump off, and so we’ll come back next week and we’ll see how it goes.
Hovik: I just want to leave by saying that the elections that are coming in two, three weeks now, without any exaggeration, they are going to be existential for Armenia. So on my behalf, I’d like to, if anyone in the diaspora is watching, tell your family, tell your friends who are in Armenia who are citizens and who can vote to at least go to the polling booth and let their voice be heard.
There is a strong campaign to De-incentivize Voting Patriotic Armenians to vote especially those who are for national pro-Armenian issues and Pashina is trying to you know create a sense of apathy and that is working in his favor in terms of the election so please lobby your relatives your friends to vote no matter who they vote for because the stronger turnout is better for democracy and As a side effect, it’s also better for the opposition.
Asbed: On my part, looking forward, I think we have a number of polls coming up in the next couple of weeks. There should be the final polls that some of these outlets will be releasing before the elections. Also, earlier in the China thing, we mentioned that each of the sides now basically has to go back to their friends and talk to them.
I believe that Trump already called Chancellor Merz of Germany will probably be briefing or be briefed by NATO and I believe today we’re recording this on May 18 Monday I believe tomorrow Putin is due in Beijing for a summit with Xi Jinping and so that side is going to be conferring on those issues as well and that’s it we look forward to the news coming up in this week take care we will talk to you next week I’m Asbed Bedrossian.
Hovik: Have a great week!