Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed: Hello everyone and welcome to the Armenian News Network Groong Week in Review for June 28, 2026. Look at this, halfway through the year, Hovik.
Hovik: Wow, yeah, definitely it’s going faster and faster. Yeah, and what a year it is so far in terms of geopolitics.
Asbed: Yeah, and we have made predictions. At some point we are going to look back on the full year and see if we got anything right.
Hovik: Do we get any money if we get something right?
Asbed: I don’t think so. What are we going to talk about today?
Hovik: I’m about to guess that if anyone got any predictions right in terms of all this turmoil, then kudos to them. I don’t know. I think there are a lot of unpredictable things happening, but the general direction, of course, we know.
Hovik: We have a shorter episode today. We’re going to talk about Israel’s recognition, in quotes, of the Armenian Genocide. We’re going to talk about the continuation of Russian warnings on Armenia regarding its EU pivot. And we’re going to talk about the post-election limbo that Armenia is currently in.
Asbed: Right, right. Well, okay, I’ll start us off. Sure, why not? So, the Israeli government voted yesterday to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
By the way, today is Monday, June 29, 2026. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who had announced last week that he would bring the recognition to a cabinet vote, and he did that, and it passed unanimously. But that’s the cabinet, okay? He said that Israel joins 32 countries that have fulfilled a moral duty by recognizing the historical truth and rejecting attempts to deny the Armenian Genocide.
He also said that the facts of this horrifying genocide, which took place over 100 years ago, are not up for debate. I think those are very powerful words. Back in August of 2025, Netanyahu was in the United States. He was in Washington and He said on television that he personally recognized the Armenian Genocide, but that gave rise to a lot of debate.
Turkey accused him of exploiting tragedies for political gains. Armenians basically said that it didn’t count because that was him personally recognizing, but it wasn’t the state of Israel. Well, that has come to pass.
Now, considering that Henry Morgenthau, the Jewish U.S. ambassador to Ottoman Turkey, documented the horrors befalling the Armenians in his letters to Washington, considering that Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide as a definition of what happened to the Armenians, considering that Adolf Hitler explicitly mentioned the lack of international response to the Armenian Genocide in order to convince his army leadership to embark on the Holocaust, I have no idea why it took Israel so long to do the right thing, but at least it’s done now.
Hovik: Yeah.
Asbed: Yeah. So what do you think was Pashinyan ’s response today? He said, there’s no need for a response. We don’t need to weaponize the Armenian Genocide.
What do you think?
Hovik: De-emphasizing the Armenian Genocide is part of the package of anti-Armenian identity measures that the Pashinyan regime, which is an occupational regime controlled by Turkey and Azerbaijan and the West, is part of and parcel of that package. But I want to address We have this recognition because many Armenians will feel the need to say, okay, well, finally Israel did the right thing. And speaking of weaponization, I have to say that Israel has been pretty good at weaponizing the Armenian Genocide itself in the past.
We have to say also that this measure that was passed by the cabinet has to be approved by the Knesset, which is populated by many parties, small parties that have sympathies towards Turkey. But I think it’s important to understand the reason why Israel is doing this. Israel suddenly has not found its moral compass. amidst doing its own genocide in Gaza. I think that’s one of the things that one should ask.
How can Israel suddenly start talking about the Armenian Genocide? And it’s important to understand the context in which this is happening. The context, of course, is the Iran-US Memorandum of Understanding. We talked about this in the past that It seems that if this MOU continues to be negotiated and has any kind of holding power, then it is bound to weaken Israel’s ambitions in the Middle East.
At the same time, it is going to strengthen Turkey’s hand. And we remember recently that Trump has been signaling that he’s willing to reinstate Turkey’s role in the F-35 program. There have been other talks about U.S. military collaboration. Trump actually hinted that Israel should leave Lebanon and let Syria, headed by the terrorist al-Jolani government, handle Hezbollah in Lebanon.
And we all know who the al-Jolani government is controlled by. It’s all MIT, Turkish intelligence. So the question to ask is, why is Israel doing this now? And it’s pretty clear that it is a potshot at Turkey.
I mean, I just don’t know why this specific card and whether it’s going to be such a death blow to Turkey that now Turkey is going to sort of change its course. Maybe it’s just a minor warning, and I think that this Armenian Genocide card is a small card that Israel is playing amidst other potential rivalries that it will start with Turkey. We should also remember that for decades the Israeli government has helped Ankara defeat efforts in the United States to recognize the Armenian Genocide through its powerful lobby in the United States.
We should also remember that the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh was directly enabled by Israel so maybe this is some way of trying to curry favor among the Armenian public that hey we’re not you know all anti-Armenian but I think the more likely answer is that this is a geopolitical sort of you know potshot at Turkey in the end
Asbed: Hovik, I know you are exploring the geopolitical context of this move, and I appreciate that. It’s not wrong. Absolutely, it exists. But the recognition is going to happen.
I think the Cabinet’s approval foreshadows the entire Knesset’s approval. But for me, it’s also important how Pashinyan has muted himself. With his silence, Pashinyan has given new ammunition to Turkey’s 111-year-old campaign of denial of the Armenian Genocide. With his silence, He is denying the Armenian Genocide.
A response is absolutely needed to the Israeli recognition of the Armenian Genocide. We don’t need to thank them, Hovik. I’m not saying let’s go thank them or we’re great things and you suddenly become a moral country.
Hovik: Even if Armenia was led by a non-treasonous government, even if Armenia was led by a moral government, then I don’t think that accepting this belated hundred-year-old recognition from a genocidal government today is any benefit to Armenia. Armenia has always held, before Pashinyan, has held the moral high ground, has held its head high despite all of the attempts to bury it under like this genocide denial. And we don’t need right now Israel’s pity or Israel’s like late recognition.
Asbed: Okay, so that’s where I also want to, let me finish what I’m going to say. There is a need to affirm that their stance puts them on the right side of history. It doesn’t. It doesn’t.
It does. For the Armenian Genocide, I think it does. Because there’s one more thing, I want to be sure to add this. Gideon Sa’ar said that it’s our moral imperative as Jews and certainly as the state of the Jewish nation to make the decision that we made today.
Hovik: Where were they 50 years ago, Asbed? Where the fuck were they? I mean, that’s a bullshit answer. I’m sorry, you know, I’m not gonna accept that.
Asbed: This is, I want to say, this is not just a moral imperative. With this moral imperative, there come legal and political imperatives, okay? The Jewish nation must now defend the memory of the Armenian Genocide with the same vehemence and ardor that they have done to the Holocaust. And they must help the Armenian nation to recover from the consequences of that great calamity of the Armenian Genocide.
And they have helped that genocide continue as recently as 2023, as recently as 2020. Okay, so there is something that we are agreeing on here, but I believe that the first step is the recognition, because from there on, there will come legal consequences.
Hovik: There won’t be any legal consequences. You don’t believe that, and it’s difficult for me to believe,
Asbed: but I think that we must insist that they are not just going to say, we recognize and we’re done.
Hovik: Okay. Let me repeat myself, there won’t be any legal consequences for Israel. If Israel does this, it will be for its own gain, and I’m not about to accept their help by selling out the Palestinians amidst the genocide in Artsakh. Let them recognize the genocide in Artsakh.
Let them say sorry for ethnically cleansing Artsakh first, and then fucking tell me about a hundred-year-old genocide that is also important, that is also part of all of our identity. So I think it’s imperative that we set the right tone about this. Let Jerusalem Armenians live. Don’t touch Jerusalem Armenian lands.
Stop supporting Azerbaijan. Stop supporting Turkey in the conquest of Armenia. And then we can talk about what you have done in the past to not recognize our genocide. Until then, I’m not holding my breath for any legal action.
I think Armenia has more imperative survival issues. in front of us and I think it will be a big detour if Armenians start to loosen their morals about Israel’s continued genocide in the Middle East and deliberate It’s not the Islamic fundamentalists that are doing this, it is Israel that is arming the Islamic fundamentalists. It is Israel reducing the Armenian presence in Jerusalem.
Asbed: Let me say that recognition by any country hasn’t come because they have seen the light and that they want to be on the right side of history. It has come because There has been tireless work by Armenian communities worldwide, the children of the Armenian Genocide, who have insisted on their rights and being remembered. And this is another step. There have been lots of countries, and Israel is the next one that has happened.
I think we should take it and continue running with it. I’m not saying Israel is going to do great things all by itself. Armenians must continue pressing for the truth, and that’s what I believe.
Hovik: And it’ll happen. It’ll happen. One step at a time. Allow us to vehemently disagree.
I do not accept any recognition. I mean, recognition is already there. I do not need the murderer of my people, including the people in Artsakh, to come and tell me I recognize your genocide. F them and F that policy that has been in place for tens of years, if not a hundred years.
So, sorry. We disagree on this one. Let’s move on.
Asbed: Like civilized people, let’s agree to disagree, and let’s move to our next topic.
Hovik: Talking about Armenia’s continued descent into Ukraine-land, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council and the former president of Russia, accused Western countries of transforming Armenia into an anti-Russian tool and backing a purge of any opposition forces that support normal relations between Armenia and Russia. He highlighted the prosecution of opposition leader Gagik Tsarukyan, whose vote was nullified, whose vote was stolen by the Central Electoral Commission and the Pashinyan regime. But the most recent news was that his, you know, businesses are now under attack.
He also slammed the EU diplomatic chief’s unexplained presence at the CEC, the Central Electoral Commission, during voting day on June 7. You know, we talk about how the EU diplomats not visiting any trials of the Armenian opposition, which they used to do in the past, but it seems like, you know, they were present at the CEC during the voting day. So it seems to me that Russia has told Armenia that it is crossing some red lines. And since this is coming from the Security Council, the deputy chair of the Security Council, it is a pretty worrisome development, I would say.
And the Armenian response probably is going to be nonchalant. Pashinyan has responded like that in the past. So we’ll see what happens. Interestingly, Armenia’s Secretary of the Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, was at a conference in Poland on June 25, dedicated to the restoration of Ukraine.
And Russia is interpreting this also as a signal that Russian assets in Armenia could be frozen just as they were in the West for later transfer to Kyiv. So what do you think of this Security Council to Security Council dialogue, non-dialogue that’s going on?
Asbed: Well, the interesting thing here, like you said, is the timing of the two events. Armen Grigoryan was in Gdańsk for that conference just last week. And then we suddenly hear from the Russian chair of the Security Council. I am wondering I was going to ask you the question.
Do you think that these two events are related to each other? Russia hardly ever has these. I mean, they’re not coincidences. They’re cause and effect, is what I’m trying to say.
Hovik: Dmitry Medvedev has been vocal about Armenia’s positions nonstop. So that’s not surprising. I don’t think they’re directly related, but I think that this is a continuation. This is a signal that Armenia is continuing.
Asbed: One of the topics that was discussed in Gdańsk was financial architectures and funding, mobilizing frozen Russian assets, securing long-term Western public aid. So when you read stuff about mobilizing frozen Russian assets and turning them over to Kyiv, That’s going to ring some bells with Russia. And they’re going to look at the list of participants there. So I think that there’s some non-coincidence going on here
Hovik: I’m pretty sure that the Armenian government wouldn’t go that far. I mean, the Armenian government would probably try to move in very incremental steps towards this EU stuff. But if Armenia fully doubles down on the EU, I think that would be like you’re racing towards a wall, your brakes don’t work, but you step on the gas pedal. So we’ll see what happens.
Asbed: We’re going to have a conversation with a Russian specialist in a few days, and I was going to ask, what are these red lines that Armenia has crossed at this point in time? Do you have any thoughts about that?
Hovik: Well, I think the biggest red line is that Armenia cannot be in the Eurasian Economic Union, derive benefits from that, and also in the EU. In reality, Armenia has had tremendous economic benefits from joining the Eurasian Economic Union over the last 10 years. And due to the war in Ukraine and due to its membership in the EAEU, it has actually been able to import and re-export a lot of stuff to Russia, circumventing sanctions while the Europeans deliberately look the other way.
So unless Armenians want to freeze this winter with the gas completely turned off or quadrupled in price, then I think that even with this government, knowing what it’s doing, there’s no point in fanning the flames further so that is I think the main red line that Russians can talk about. Of course the Russian military base in Gyumri. I mean it’s not an official red line and the Russian presence in the Caucasus.
But it is, I think, an unspoken red line that if, for instance, Armenia tries to expel the Russian base and further curtail any Russian investment, maybe nationalize the railway company, the railway concession that it has currently given to Russia. I mean, I think those are the cards that Armenia has left to play. But they’re all very suicidal, I think, for an Armenian government.
Asbed: It has to be a lot more political and geopolitical. It’s not just the fact that Russia doesn’t want to fund Armenia’s Western pivot. There’s probably a lot more interest on the part of Russia in the South Caucasus that we want to find out exactly what are these red lines? I’m kind of interested in finding these more explicitly than just, you know, crossing red lines.
What are these things?
Hovik: There are official red lines that can be backed up by agreements like the EAEU charter and so forth, which are, you know, but of course, there are also unofficial red lines, of course, the Russian influence in the Caucasus, which you know, Russia has other unofficial ways of putting pressure back towards that.
Asbed: Well, Hovik, speaking of that, you know, all these trade embargoes that are going on. Russia is not taking any kind of flowers. It’s not taking any agricultural products. It’s not taking any fish.
All these things are one thing. But another aspect is the remittances from Armenians working in Russia and sending money back to Armenia. I was looking that up today and it’s something between $3 billion and $4 billion a year. And it’s basically what keeps the Armenian dram afloat.
You know, the economy seems to be going up and down and wars. I mean, the most amazing thing is that throughout the 2020 war, throughout the issues of 21, 22, and 23, the dram was absolutely stable. And I was thinking, there’s black magic going on under the dram. There’s no way it can be that stable.
The reality is that its stability is entirely vouched for by these remittances, primarily from Russia. Just imagine if Russia were to stop Armenians working in Russia from sending any money back. The country would tank, would absolutely tank. Just think, we have 20% poverty level right now, what would it be without the $3 billion of person-to-person family transfers of $3 billion?
Hovik: And it’s not like all of these people are in Russia and they send money. They are actually migrant laborers from Armenia who go in the summer and work and come back in the winter or vice versa. So Russia could cut off that supply even at the source by not giving that many immigrant visas and tightening immigration rules, which it also has threatened. So these people won’t even be able to go and work and then bring the physical money with them back because they will be prevented from working in the first place.
Asbed: This is a badly deteriorating or already deteriorated relationship between the two countries which has gone from strategic partners to, well, I hope Russia doesn’t suddenly label Armenia as an enemy country at some point.
Hovik: The only recourse that I’m assuming that the Armenian leadership is counting on, if they dare to fan the flames further, is that the EU has somehow guaranteed that it will put Armenia on a welfare program for five years, feeding Armenia billions of dollars every year to offset the cost of the Russian benefits. It’s not going to happen. But yeah, it’s not going to happen. And if it does, then Armenia will become a complete basket case of a country, whose only purpose is to antagonize Russia, in which case there will be more serious consequences.
Asbed: Okay, well, let’s turn our attention to this post-election limbo. As we noted last week, Armenia’s Constitutional Court said it would rule on the election appeals by July 4th. Six opposition parties and alliances have applied calling for the annulment of the election. So there’s this eerie quiet that I think it was you who described it last week as the quiet before the storm kind of a moment in Armenia.
But it’s really not that quiet, is it? Because if you read the news… I know you read the news. I know you watch the videos and everything.
Pashinyan’s government continues with its daily vote-buying propaganda campaign in the press. I mean, we see it almost every day. Three people arrested, five people arrested. The point is really not even numbers, even though over the past two months there have been hundreds of opposition-type people who have been arrested.
Many of them have been released, but others are just in pretrial detention hell. And the government is basically building a fake case against the opposition that they were trying to rig the election. Basically, they’re trying the opposition in the court of public opinion right now. They’re trying to build a case where if they go for another election, they will be able to exclude opposition parties by saying these parties were buying votes, so they’re not legitimate.
In fact, Pashinyan has said not a single party would have gotten any votes had they not been buying these things. And they’ve been jailing a lot of people. I’m going to let you maybe talk about some of the cases that we know of…
Hovik: Yeah, so I know that, for instance, Ishkhan Saghatelyan’s home was searched. He’s one of the top people in the ARF/Armenia Alliance. They confiscated his money and personal property, but no charges were filed. Typical pattern.
HayaQve leader Avetik Chalabyan was arrested again, allegedly for inciting foreign officials to help the opposition with the election. The government accuses him of meeting with Russian officials. Funny that the Armenian government essentially hosted the entire top leadership of the EU as part of the EPC, or Marco Rubio, but none of that is, you know, registering with, you know, none of that matters to them.
Asbed: Hovik, that’s a really funny thing that you mentioned, because just today, as a matter of fact, in court, the judge was, I think it was Seda Safaryan, whom we talked about last week, was pressing on the opposition saying, well, wouldn’t the statements made by Putin mean that they were trying to support the opposition? So couldn’t it be a case of foreign interference? And the lawyers pushed back and said, but look at the direct endorsements. that the Civil Contract Party received and all the propaganda that happened during the EPC and the EU-Armenia summit, etc, etc here. Should those not be considered foreign interference as well?
Well, I don’t have any results. They’re not going to speak until July 4th. But yeah, like you said, it’s going on.
Hovik: Yeah. In addition to all this, the government revoked Gagik Tsarukyan’s casino license, which is one of the bigger casinos in Armenia. It’s interesting that this is also benefiting many of the competitors of Tsarukyan who are Nikol Pashinyan supporters. There are several casinos that are operated by friends of Alen Simonyan and Nikol Pashinyan. who stand to benefit from the gambling industry if Gagik Tsarukyan’s casino is not allowed to operate not only is the Armenian government cutting off ties with Russia but but it is also using this to reorder and organize the business interests in the country.
So the pro-EU, pro-Turkish Armenian business officials get all the redistributions of wealth and opportunity. The same goes for agricultural investments. Gagik Tsarukyan has many agricultural investments as well. And many of those that are now going to Russia, maybe there will be a few opportunities to sell to Europe, and those opportunities will go towards the supporters of the Pashinyan regime.
But going back to the arrests, we know Edgar Ghazaryan , who is part of the Strong Armenia ticket. He was number 13 on Strong Armenia. His sister, Lilit Ghazaryan, was fired from her position as the deputy head of the drug regulatory agency. And the message is essentially that if you relate to anyone who criticizes the government, you will be unemployed and you will be financially ruined.
So not only are the businesses being redistributed, but essentially any opportunity for making ends meet, for having meaningful work in Armenia, is being denied to the opposition if people are against Pashinyan.
Asbed: The same thing happened today, it was in the news, that a career teacher, a person who’s been a teacher for 31 years, happened to also be on the party list of Strong Armenia, but she was summarily fired from her job. We’ll put the link to the article in the show notes, but basically she was fired because her political views did not fit the government. So just like you said, you don’t agree with the government, you can be unemployed and you can be financially ruined.
Hovik: Also, there was this news, right, that I think more than a dozen priests have been drafted to the army. And this is after the, you know, previously the Armenian Church had this chaplaincy service in the army where priests could go and become chaplains in the army and serve as priests and also it would get counted towards their military service that everyone has to do by becoming a chaplain and essentially like all those once the chaplaincy was canceled now all those priests who are military age are being drafted into the army even the ones
Asbed: who were actually serving in the army are being drafted because they really are not controlling who they pick up and who they incarcerate, who they can serve, who gets sent to the army. They really just look at where you’re coming from. And it’s generally the priests who come from Russia who are visiting Armenia, and they will just basically pick them up and send them to service because they think that these guys are in Armenia for some anti-government activity. And like I said, including a priest who had actually served in the armed forces.
Hovik: We should not forget all of the existing people who are either in jail, in-house detention, or with some kind of a limitation on their freedoms, over the past few years already. And those people now probably number in more than, I want to say, more than 100 people. And this is nothing more than a Stalinist purge that is going on in Armenia.
It is the EU and EU-funded media and that includes many who have Armenian names that are funded by the EU are doing a pretty good job in masking this and I’m disgusted to think about this but the fact that is that we are one of the few sources in the English language that are reporting about these things, and even when you read foreign-funded news they always present the government story as he-said-she-said, meanwhile people are arrested. For instance, recently Mikayel Srpazan’s jail sentence was not commuted. The court rejected the commutation of his jail sentence. So he has already served in jail for a year.
I want to bet, I pretty much believe that he will be eventually found innocent because You know it’s his speech that gave the Armenian government an issue so eventually the European Court of Human Rights is going to find him innocent but they’re making these people pay with their lives with their livelihood with their health with their opportunity to serve their community I mean would you be able to take a year off your life and if you were working, if you were supporting your family, would you be able to take a year off your life?
Like Avetik Chalabyan already has been arrested one year before, has served a sentence before, now he’s being arrested again. I mean, if you’re any kind of a professional working and putting food on your table, You’re stopped from doing that.
Asbed: The most important thing for them is to disable you at present. They don’t care how much of your life you spend in prison or what you are going to do five years from now, ten years from now, they’re not going to be around. The most important thing for them is that you are unable to work against them today through any means. Meanwhile, the Civil Contract Party has already picked its next National Assembly speaker, and that’s Ruben Rubinyan.
Guess who was the happiest about this? It’s Turkey. Rubinyan was Mr. Normalization, right?
He’s worked with Serdar Kılıç to ensure that Turkey’s demands are met. You know, supposedly the two countries were working together without any preconditions, but after five years, there are no results to show in this so-called no precondition normalization, because basically Turkey is working its conditions one by one through Aliyev ’s demands and saying, you know, we’re not going to be able to open the border, there will be no trade until Azerbaijan signs peace and Azerbaijan will not sign peace until 5,000 preconditions. Well, we don’t even know the end of the preconditions.
I just read a few days ago that Aliyev is trying to present his 300,000 Azerbaijanis who need to come to Armenia at the UN. But we’re not going to talk about that right now, because at least in my case, I didn’t read a lot of detail on that.
Hovik: Well, I think that the true story about people like Ruben Rubinyan will be known after this regime is in jail and Armenia is de-occupied because all of these people, I think Ararat Mirzoyan, Ruben Rubinyan have spent time in Turkey, at least the media writes about this, the Armenian media writes that he has spent, I think, I remember reading that Ruben Rubinyan has spent a year in Turkey prior to the coup in 2018, it is unknown what they were doing, ostensibly they were studying, but I would not be surprised to find out that they were recruited to be part of this effort back then.
I don’t have any proof of it, but I would not be surprised, and the same goes for many of the other civil contract top people.
Asbed: Hovik, let’s cut to the bottom line. Do you have any expectations from the court on July 4th? And also, because I know what your answer is, and it’s the same as mine, is the opposition ready for a negative ruling? I mean, they should have a plan B, right?
There should be something that they have decided that they’re going to do if they get a negative ruling which says, oh, the election was just fine, all your complaints are bullshit, let’s move forward, Pashinyan won. Well, what happens then?
Hovik: Unfortunately I don’t have any positive expectations from the Constitutional Court because as we said it’s completely stacked with pro-Pashinyan officials. Pashinyan is the first head of our The so-called Democratic Leader of Armenia, who has been able to fully stack the Constitutional Court in his favor. No other previous leader of Armenia has been able to appoint all the Constitutional Court judges. And Pashinyan did that through illegal means by forcing some people to resign, by modifying the law to limit their terms and so forth.
And many of those also are going to be part of their criminal record in the future. But it will look really bad for the Armenian Constitutional Court as legal professionals, as people who are supposed to represent the highest law of the land to fully support Pashinyan. So I’m expecting a minor outcome. The minor outcome might be that Gagik Tsarukyan’s party may somehow get reinstated.
Their votes may be recounted.
Asbed: I heard that the judge actually explicitly asked the question, if those precincts had not been invalidated by the CEC, would Prosperous Armenia have made it into the parliament? And since the answer for that is yes, I mean, why would they ask a question to which they have an answer that they don’t like? It’s an interesting event.
Hovik: I would say 20% chance that the Prosperous Armenia votes will be reinstated, but I think this Constitutional Court affair will be setting the stage for actually new elections, and I don’t know how it will be phrased. Maybe the Constitutional Court will say that in order to achieve solidarity, new elections must be held, but at the same time, Pashinyan will be able to ban all the opposition parties and hold new elections. One of the funny things is, you mentioned Seda Safaryan, right?
Well, the party that she used to be part of, which is For the Republic, is one of the plaintiffs, and they’re on the side of Pashinyan, and they are saying that the elections should be annulled because of the opposition vote buying.
So, number one, she didn’t recuse herself because she used to be a candidate for member of parliament on that party’s ticket that is now that she is now participating in the hearing of, and none of the other judges voted to recuse her but also I expect some surprises from Pashinyan you know we’ve talked about this but maybe immediately like you know I would say okay I would say 20% chance that that Prosperous Armenia gets its votes back, 20% chance that the Constitutional Court will rule for new elections sometime in the future to be decided by the government, and 60% chance that nothing else will change. So we’ll see how it goes.
Asbed: Okay, Hovik. Time to close, but before that, I just want to make a quick announcement.
Asbed: We just published a new TCC, The Critical Corner, article by Eddie Arnavoudian with a foreword by Dr. Pietro Shakarian. It’s titled A History of Armenian Critical Thought, Part 7, The Early Armenian Bolsheviks. I think it’s a very interesting and informative article.
It’s definitely worth a read. Please go to groong.org/tcc But we’ve also published it on our Facebook page and group. It’s been tweeted on X. So please take the time to read it.
I think you’ll like it. All right. We’re going to leave it there for today. Thank you everyone for listening.
And we’ll talk to you next week.
Hovik: Have a great day. Bye bye.