Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Armenian News Network Groong Week in Review for August 2nd, 2026. Hello, Hovik. How are you doing?
Hovik Manucharyan: I’m on the road and a little bit under the weather. So all in all though, I’m doing great and happy to be here.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, you sound a little stuffy. I’m sorry to hear that.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay, well, we have a couple of topics. We’re going to talk a little about the new government that got sworn in yesterday and how the first sitting of the Ninth Convocation of the National Assembly of Armenia went. And then we’re going to talk about this railroad issue that keeps coming in and out and it’s just kind of sitting over the country like a cloud.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay, let’s jump into the first one. Hovik, you probably thought that I was going to talk about all the pomp and circumstance and all the photo ops that were taken, the swearing in ceremonies and everything. You know what? I’m not going to participate in that.
If you want any of that stuff, audience, if you want that, go to government sites and check out all the videos that they have. For me, it was a little more important that at the inaugural session of the 9th Convocation of this Assembly, which happened yesterday on August 2nd, we are recording this on August 3rd, the Armenia Alliance Member of Parliament, Ishkhan Saghatelyan , asked the new Civil Contract speaker, Ruben Rubinyan, a simple question.
Asbed Bedrossian: He asked, can you declare and guarantee that during your term in power, under no circumstance and under no pretext, will you surrender Tigranashen? Here’s the response, and it’s of course translated to English.
Hovik Manucharyan: Can I just say, for those who don’t understand, Tigranashen is on a very critical point between the north and south communications artery of Armenia on the west side, and essentially it would… It would create immense strategic problems if Tigranashen, or as the Azeris actually officially refer to it as Qyarqi, is handed over. So this is one of the most strategic positions that Armenia could give away to Azerbaijan.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay, so simple question to Ruben Rubinyan, and this is the response. I can guarantee that the internationally recognized territory of Armenia is 29,743 square kilometers, and this is a complete and indisputable red line. I can guarantee that the declared program of the Armenian government, which was approved by the people, is as follows. All those territories that are within internationally recognized borders of Armenia should be under our control and the issue should be resolved within the framework of demarcation.
As for other issues, according to the regulations of the demarcation commissions can be resolved differently because the regulations allow for certain optimizations, but even then it requires a referendum.
Asbed Bedrossian: Did you get that, Hovik?
Hovik Manucharyan: I wish that Saghatelyan responded by saying, you know, is our territory 29,743 square kilometers, is it in the Arctic? Or maybe on the Moon? Maybe Azerbaijan will recognize Armenia’s territory to be somewhere on the dark side of the moon.
Asbed Bedrossian: So I’m going to give two more parts of this conversation.
Asbed Bedrossian: Saghatelyan comes back and says, I didn’t understand what optimization of territories means, but let’s just record that I’m asking a very simple question, direct question. And it’s not at all accidental that I’m asking about Tigranashen. Tigranashen is a stronghold of strategic importance for us. Now, is Tigranashen included in the territorial integrity of Armenia that you mentioned or not?
And I repeat again, Mr. Rubinyan, it’s not accidental that I’m asking you about Tigranashen. Can you deny the talks that you are going to hand over Tigranashen under the name of demarcation or enclaves or whatever?
Asbed Bedrossian: And the response from Mr. Rubinyan. Optimization theoretically means that when, for example, the parties decide to make some small changes within the framework of small demarcation so that, for example, the life of border villages is not disrupted or to take into account the relief. Note that I am saying purely theoretically.
The issue was not discussed between the demarcation commissions. Theoretically, such an opportunity may also exist with regard to the issue of enclaves. I think everyone knows what that territory is. And it is a well-known fact that it cannot be up for discussion for us.
Hovik Manucharyan: There you go, Hovik.
Asbed Bedrossian: What do you think of those responses? Clear as mud? Clear as the azure skies of deepest summer?
Hovik Manucharyan: I think they’ve been watching the trials of Bill Clinton regarding Monica Lewinsky. I will not sleep with that woman.
Asbed Bedrossian: What is, is, right?
Hovik Manucharyan: What is the definition of is?
Asbed Bedrossian: What do you think is going on here? I certainly have my opinions. I want to hear what you think about this exchange.
Hovik Manucharyan: I mean, I’m wondering if you’re probably asking me rhetorically, but it’s clear as day that this government has promised or has been demanded to hand over Tigranashen. Azerbaijan has constantly reminded Armenia that that territory must be handed over. And that is Armenian territory, just to be clear. That is territory in the Republic of Armenia, enshrined in the Constitution of Armenia.
And what is being discussed right now is actually Aliyev has demanded. I believe that Pashinyan and his team have agreed. Now they’re trying to slowly sell this and other territories that they’re going to hand away in very piecemeal steps. And if you want to see maps about this, if you want to see what’s going on, you can go to one of our previous episodes, which we… recorded with George Tabakian, where actually we went through all these enclaves and what they mean.
But it’s clear that enclaves didn’t exist when Armenia joined the Soviet Union. And even towards the end of the Soviet Union, there were commissions that essentially de-conflicted all the border areas and all the paperwork, more than 100 or so protocols were signed between Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan to clear up this whole enclave issue. It was all done illegally during the Stalin years, but today’s Azerbaijan is not going to honor those agreements and those protocols. And Pashinyan pretends that those protocols don’t even exist.
So that’s the amount of, what do you call, gaslighting that we’re being
Asbed Bedrossian: That’s right. One of the key factors here is that there is some kind of a basis for these discussions for demarcation delimitation, but we don’t know what they are. They claim that they are maps, but we don’t know if they’re the 1975 maps or the 1989 maps or whatever maps. Ultimately, they’ve made it so that it’s just Aliyev says.
And it goes. That’s that’s what it’s become. They obviously they can’t tell us. For me, this response by Rubinyan shows that they’re trying very hard not to say that we will surrender the land on the National Assembly’s records.
They don’t want to come out and say we’re going to do this because it’s going to stick with them for posterity. But it doesn’t matter. It is going to stick with them. It’s going to be on their watch and on their record.
I have two or three points to make. If so-called everyone knows what the territory is, then why is it taking more than a day to finish this process and get Azerbaijan’s army out of Armenia? Clearly, something is missing here. Second, if they know that Armenia’s territory is 29,743 square kilometers, it’s not 29,742 or not 29,744.
Then they know exactly what is being included, right? I mean, there is a precision here. So is Tigranashen included or not? And that’s what Ishkhan Saratelian was asking.
And we can’t get an answer for this.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, and at the minimum we can say that they are acknowledging that it is up for negotiation, but I think it’s much worse than that. So how can one of the most strategic points, you know, if you just go to Google Maps and it’s gotten to the point where even Google Maps, if you type in from Yerevan to Syunik, even Google Maps now gives that territory as contested. So it shows a big detour through one of the surrounding areas and it’s all the strategic heights are in that area.
So if there is that detour and Armenia does agree to give it away, then this is going to be I think the death blow to Armenia strategically in terms of being able to communicate north and south and being able to defend Armenia properly.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah. So the bottom line for me, Hovi, is that I continue to have zero confidence in the Civil Contract leadership. And anyway, so now we have a ninth convocation of the National Assembly of Armenia, and they all took up, the opposition all took up their mandates while rejecting the results of the June 7 election. And so similarly, let’s congratulate all those Groong guests who have now become MPs, members of parliament.
And even though we don’t believe in this leadership, we are glad that they are in the fight and they’re gonna, you know, we’re hoping that they will have good luck. Arthur Khachatryan from Armenia Alliance. Anna Grigoryan , Armenia Alliance, and she’s the leader of the faction. Arega Hovsepyan, whom we’ve talked to in the last two, three months.
Aram Vardevanyan, whom we’ve talked to many years ago. Strong Armenia, nominated as deputy speaker, as a matter of fact.
Hovik Manucharyan: Congratulations. And I’d like to add to that Edgar Ghazaryan , whom we’ve interviewed in Armenia several times, but no English interviews.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay. Well, may you folks make a very positive difference for Armenia.
Hovik Manucharyan: Good luck. And congratulations to the Pashinyan team for falsifying the elections. I hope you guys choke on it. And I hope all your Western sponsors choke on this because you’re not going to digest this.
That’s all I can say.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay. We’ll put you down as being on the fence, undecided about this government, Hovik. Let’s hit our next topic.
Hovik Manucharyan: So I think the other major topic, we’ve covered all of the economic situation between Armenia and Russia, and we’ll have a guest later this week to talk more about the details of the severe problems that Armenia is having now due to its mindless and senseless alienation of Russia. But as part of that whole thing, Russian Railways, which was a concession that Armenia gave to the Russian Railways company to manage Armenia’s rail network, is now on the chopping block in terms of essentially being privatized by Pashinyan and probably handed over to some other entity. So that’s the history of this.
In 2008, Armenia transferred the operational management of its entire rail network. to Russia under a 30-year concession contract that is set to expire in 2038. Now, if you want to understand the history, before 1918, or before the Russians entered the region, there was no railway or rail network. It was all built during the Russian Empire and then the Soviet times. So I think it makes sense that if there is a different company that is able to manage this, then Armenia has no in-house experience in managing the network.
At the time, it made sense. But regardless, today, as part of his pivot to the West, Pashinyan is now aggressively pressuring Russia to surrender or negotiate control of the management, arguing that Russia’s mismanagement of the systems has turned the infrastructure into a strategic bottleneck. It’s funny that this was never mentioned before and all of a sudden became a problem. So he’s actually threatening to go to international arbitration.
That’s a first, you know, he never even honors international arbitration contracts. Now he’s saying that we’re gonna go to international arbitration and assert that we’re gonna assess rent and lease charges against Russian Railways amounting to two billion dollars annually for controlling national transit. Now mind you, I personally as an Armenian, I don’t care whether, a foreign company, you know, if it’s fair, if it gets its, you know, if it gets, you know, justice, right? But it’s clear that along with everything else that Pashinyan is doing, this is frivolous and selective prosecution and has geopolitical consequences.
Alternatively, Yerevan floated the idea of buying out the concession. So if you don’t want me to take you to court, like he honors court results, he said we could transfer the concession or the operational management to a neutral, quote unquote, neutral power such as Kazakhstan, Qatar and the UAE. Yeah, some neutral powers for sure. Moscow and the Russian Railways have strongly pushed back.
The CEO of the company and even the Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu noted that Russia has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to rehabilitate the failing Soviet-era lines, rebuild tracks damaged by natural disasters and industrial infrastructure modernizations. Bottom line, Moscow’s stance is that the agreement remains legally binding until 2038, and they are not going to budge. And if Armenia terminates early, then Yerevan will be forced to reimburse Russia for hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investments.
And this whole thing is, I mean, whenever I hear these hundreds of millions of dollars, honestly, I don’t know what the Russians are thinking because Pashinyan has jacked up Armenia’s national debt so much that if it comes to money, I’m pretty sure that he will take up more debt just to get his way and, as a result, weaken Armenia’s geopolitical stance and achieve his geopolitical gains.
Asbed Bedrossian: Let me just insert one comment here. How is he exactly going to buy the Russians out? It’s not like he’s got money sitting around. He’s just going to go and get another loan from Europe.
And I mean loan, not a grant or anything. Europeans will be happy to lend enough money so that the Russians are kicked out, so it serves their purpose. But then we’re going to have these generations of Armenians for the next 25-30 years who are paying for this debt.
Hovik Manucharyan: Every Armenian child that is born today, well that was actually, I’m quoting one-year-old numbers, probably it’s even higher today, is born with $4,000 of debt in a society where there’s extreme poverty, where the average salary is in the hundreds of dollars. It’s clear that this policy of inflating the national debt, and he’s doubled it in his eight years in power, is going to be catastrophic for coming generations. I think that the question that we should ask is, who is behind all this? I mean, it’s easy to have one hand-wavy response, the West.
Yes, it could be true, but I think there are specific powers within the West that are interested in doing this. And I think we need to take into account that, for instance, last month, I believe, the EU announced that it is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements in Azerbaijani railways in Nakhijevan. And I think that earlier this year we heard that the EU is buying in essentially on this TRIPP route. So there are a lot of fingers, I think there’s a lot of evidence pointing to Armenia being put up to this by Europe, specifically the Brussels bureaucrats.
And earlier this year, I think this whole issue with the Russian Railways started earlier this year when Pashinyan said some countries, without specifying which, have a problem with Russia controlling the railways. And at that time no one mentioned mismanagement, no one mentioned other problems. I’m going to take you to court. Pashinyan said some countries are having a problem with this, so we’re looking for a friendly solution.
Just leave Russia and it’ll be a friendly solution.
Asbed Bedrossian: At this point he’s made it into almost a campaign promise that he’s going to remove the Russian concession and he’s going to remove the Catholicos. Those are two major campaign promises that he’s planning to carry out.
Hovik Manucharyan: Now, another interesting thing is that Pashinyan, when he was initially trying to come up with this fake pretense about the Russian Railways and Russia providing an obstacle, he sort of demanded, when he first put up his demands, he also demanded that Russia build connections from the existing railway in Armenia to Yeraskh, which will allow Armenia to connect to
Asbed Bedrossian: Azerbaijan. For geographic purposes, let’s specify that that point, Yeraskh, is on the northwestern side of Nakhijevan.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yes. So that would, ostensibly, that sounds good. But what’s interesting is that, and the reason that Pashinyan is doing that, it’s actually one of Robert Kocharyan ’s ideas. But why Pashinyan is doing it is he’s trying to make it like Russia is against building this.
And I don’t know what happened in the back rooms, but I’m pretty sure that if it made financial sense for Russia to do it, then Russia, why wouldn’t they? But what happened is now they’re saying, well, you know, it’s not just, you know, you not building these connections to Yeraskh, there’s also mismanagement and we’re going to take you to court for it. So I’m pretty sure that was not the original reason. And the reason why Pashinyan is ostensibly phrasing it this way is that he says we want to connect through Yeraskh, go to Nakhijevan, then go to Gyumri and go to Kars.
So that is ostensibly the vision that Pashinyan is selling to Armenians. But first, Turkey has invested billions of dollars to build the railway connection from Kars to Nakhijevan directly. Through Armenia South. It’s a $6 billion project or something, multi-billion dollars, let me just say.
And Aliyev has said that there was never any plan to extend TRIPP and to make it go north through Gyumri and then Kars. So Aliyev holds all the cards. And if he’s saying that, and if he’s not showing any sign of So I think this is just a big game. The EU has basically put up demands that you get rid of Russia.
If you want us to take part in TRIPP and give you more money, then you should get rid of Russia. And that’s what Pashinyan is doing.
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, look, the face of this so-called normalization between Armenia and Turkey is, as a matter of fact, supposedly the opening of the border, this Ani Bridge. And essentially, Turkey, who is a major competitor of Russia in South Caucasus right now, now that the Russian power has waned a little bit, they don’t want any kind of Russian management or Russian border guards in any country. In any of the Turkish dealings, right? This is one of the main things.
And this is why I believe Turkey and Azerbaijan are pushing Armenia to get Russians out.
Hovik Manucharyan: I would say, so that’s where I think we disagree. I would say Turkey and Azerbaijan don’t care. They have received what they want. I think the U.S. in this case, who is the main sponsor of TRIPP and Trump have gotten what they want.
Asbed Bedrossian: We’ll have to disagree about this one because I do believe that Turkey and Azerbaijan do care. This trip thing, this Zangezur Corridor is not just going to be used for vegetables and fruits. They’re going to be running guns all the way to Central Asia. And so Russia knows this.
Russia knows that this is going to go against their national security.
Hovik Manucharyan: So we’re conflating a few things. TRIPP and the Zangezur Corridor is there. It’s what Turkey wants. We’re not talking about TRIPP and Zangezur.
We’re talking about not only the Russian management of the railways, but some of the reasons why, for instance, you talked about Kars and Gyumri. And I’m trying to say, even if we envision that there is a shorter railway that’s cheaper, that goes through Nakhijevan, then to Gyumri, then to Kars. Turkey, I think, wouldn’t care about that modification of TRIPP. Azerbaijan says nothing like that is on the table.
Maybe I misspoke in terms of what we’re disagreeing on, but that’s my main disagreement.
Asbed Bedrossian: The reason why I think this is very relevant is because the Russians are bringing up Point 9 of the 2020 ceasefire agreement. Remember that one? They’ve been saying that there was an agreement that the Russian FSB is going to be managing the transportation between Azerbaijan mainland and Nakhijevan through Syunik. Well, TRIPP completely short circuits that.
And so the Russians are trying to be involved, and part of their involvement is through the concession, the management of railways, and that would include, theoretically, whatever railways are going to be running through Syunik called TRIPP. I knew that this was going to come to a head at some point, because Pashinyan is essentially signed on two dotted lines. He has signed on the trilateral agreement and the Russians want to hold him to that. And he has signed some kind of or initial something in August 2025 in the White House.
And he’s basically sold the same property or the same rights twice to two major powers who are at war with each other.
Hovik Manucharyan: The only thing that I will add is the nuance that I think the biggest push to kick out Russia is the EU and not the U.S., not Turkey and Azerbaijan, even though it would suit their interests as well. But they’re not going to die on that hill. EU is because EU is gearing up for a major war with Russia.
Asbed Bedrossian: I have no argument with that. I believe that the U.S. and the EU also have And they would prefer, well, in the case of the U.S., I think they would prefer to see the Russians out. In the case of the EU, like you said, they’ll probably die on the hill to make sure that Russia is not in.
Hovik Manucharyan: Exactly. And that’s what’s going on.
Asbed Bedrossian: Folks, we’re going to put a lot of links in our show notes, podcasts.groong.org slash episode number. Go and check out the various links that we’ve provided for some of the research that we’ve done for this. It’ll be interesting.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. And we know that today’s episode was short, but we’re going to have another interview we’re recording today, but we’ll put it out later in the week with Hrant Mikaelian on all the economic consequences of this triangle between Russia, EU and Armenia. And I think that will also be a very interesting show. So please stay tuned for it.
But yeah, that’s all we have for you today. I know it’s…
Asbed Bedrossian: There are other topics, but because of our own time. Yeah. We’ll just stick to these two, and we’ll get back to all the important stuff in either a week or less. Thanks for listening.
Hovik Manucharyan: I’m Asbed Bedrossian. And I’m Hovik Manucharyan. We’ll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.