Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed Bedrossian: Everyone to the Armenian News Network Groong Week in Review for September 13, 2026. Hovik, you take it away first this week.
Hovik Manucharyan: Hey, Asbed. Hello to our listeners and viewers.
Hovik Manucharyan: So let’s begin. Last week marked the fourth anniversary of the war in September 2022, which many, I guess, forget about because it’s so easy. We’ve seen so many military conflicts over the last five, six years. That event lasted three days, and it started with Azerbaijan without provocation attacking Armenia at night, on September 13, 2022.
And in the end, it was able to occupy 250 square kilometers of territory. To picture it, I guess you can compare that with the area of the entire city of Yerevan, which is home to more than a million people. Or you can compare it to, or if you want to talk about Gaza, that’s like three-fifths the size of Gaza. And all this territory is still in possession or under occupation by Azerbaijan.
Now, during that war, 224 Armenian servicemen and women were martyred and 293 more were wounded. Five Armenian servicewomen, it’s documented and proven, were sexually mutilated, abused and tortured. and the Azerbaijani soldiers filmed themselves executing just Armenian prisoners en masse.
Asbed Bedrossian: Pointblank execution style, Hovik.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. And, you know, we cite these numbers, but the fact remains that the Armenian government has not released any, just like the 2020 war, they have not released the names of all of the victims. And so we have to take these numbers at face value, whatever they provide. and you know some may ask why it’s important to talk about this you know i guess every show is an anniversary of some kind a bad anniversary um so why do you think it’s important uh to talk about it or do you have any thoughts you
Asbed Bedrossian: I do have some thoughts, multiple thoughts. First of all, it was only a month after this that Pashinyan just basically went to Prague and recognized as part of Azerbaijan. And I’m thinking that between 2020 and 2022, he must have his feet towards some of the promises that he may have made that were not on paper, which was basically the recognition of Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan. And Azerbaijan decided, okay, well, we’re going to attack and kill people and take your own territory until you do that.
And it showed that the man is not fit for command. And, you know, 225 people were killed needlessly. I’m not saying he should have recognized Artsakh earlier, but I’m saying that he should have prepared for something like that. And he shouldn’t have made promises that the parliament had not passed signed off on.
So that’s why it’s important. And we went from basically his own words, Artsakh is Armenia, to essentially what amounts to Artsakh is Azerbaijan, a shameless 180. So that’s one of the reasons why it’s really important.
I have one more thought, Hovik, and that is because I was reading an article recently. when you said that there were a number of women soldiers who were mutilated those were horrible horrible sexual mutilations and dismemberments i remember them vividly i was incensed at those things and nothing has been done about them there those are flat-out war crimes recently there was an article about how Anna Hagopian is going around for championing women’s rights and trying to raise the issue of domestic abuse and stuff like that. But absolutely, she doesn’t talk anything about holding these war criminal Azeris mutilating Armenian women soldiers.
Nothing. And what about the ombudsman or the ombudswoman? Anahid, what’s her name? Manoyan.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. It’s funny that many of the top
Asbed Bedrossian: There is not a peep from these people about this issue.
Hovik Manucharyan: lieutenants of Pashinyan who are now in charge of torturing Armenian prisoners, putting them in jail, and closing their eyes, even though their position is human rights ombudswoman, are women. It is surreal, but if you look at it on paper, they passed a checklist test. So, hey, we have women in power. And it is truly disgusting to talk about this, especially in light of some of the other things we’ll talk about today, where Azerbaijan is continuing its anti-Armenian policies while Armenia is laying down on its back and saying we have peace.
But what’s interesting for me is… But what’s important for me is to highlight that… think that, yes, this was part of a longer process. Officially, they call it, I guess, the Brussels process, under the auspices and stewardship of, I guess, Emmanuel Macron and Charles Michel , you know, I don’t want to be, you know, wear a tinfoil hat necessary in order to convince the Armenian public but in the end I think that Pashinyan used this to say see you know we’re not we’re powerless no one is coming to our aid so we’re gonna recognize Artsakh as Azerbaijan and
Asbed Bedrossian: I’m going to respond to that. He is powerless, not the Armenian nation or the state.
Hovik Manucharyan: hey and and of course they use this event to say see we requested the CSTO to intervene but they didn’t during that time armenia didn’t even declare martial law or military regime, which is required, then you go and recognize Artsakh as Azerbaijan, and then you say, why didn’t the CSTO intervene? And it seems like a lot of things were happening to prevent the Russians and prevent the CSTO even from clearly i’m not exonerating them but you know the fish things
Asbed Bedrossian: Hufik, I think that this whole border issue that people don’t know where the border
Hovik Manucharyan: from the head
Asbed Bedrossian: is or Aliyev doesn’t know where the border is or Pashinyan doesn’t, this is all complete BS because I have read that something on the order of 96% of the border is 100% demarcated. The only thing that wasn’t done, well, or delineated, whatever the terminology is,
Hovik Manucharyan: Demarcated. Actually, it was demarcated.
Asbed Bedrossian: because the only thing they hadn’t put are the posts.
Hovik Manucharyan: It was both delineated and demarcated.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, they didn’t put the posts because it was the Soviet Union and they wanted essentially like an open country to be able to travel between the countries.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Just like, you know, just like you go from California to Arizona, for example. So they didn’t put the posts, but the borders were very well known on all sides.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. Hrant Bagrat speaks about this a lot. He was a former Armenian prime minister. I believe the original person who, one of the people who originally participated in the 1988 demarcation of the border
Asbed Bedrossian: Right.
Hovik Manucharyan: is still alive, and I think that they are planning on giving an interview. They have shown documents about this and the actual demarcation posts also did exist, but they were like removed over time. But there is still evidence of their existence because, you know, there’s like charcoal underneath. Anyway, I think that this is all a fake narrative.
But all this to say that it’s quite convenient, right, for Europe to. I would say I would stand firmly in the camp that says Europe essentially and Macron pushed Pashinyan to do this recognition. it’s quite convenient that now, and then when they went to Russia, both Aliyev and Pashinyan said, you know what, we’ve come to an agreement, Artsakh is Azerbaijan, so we don’t need Russia’s mediation. And then you turn around and blame Russia for not protecting your own borders or CSTO as well.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hovik, for me, Charles Michel is a despicable character. He was, I think, the one who advanced the lower the bar on Artsakh thing, which we heard from Pashinyan. And look at what happened.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: You know what? If I were president of Armenia, I would try that guy in absentia and he would be arrested when he entered Armenia.
Hovik Manucharyan: Thank you. Yeah, exactly. And just for those who, like two days after this incident, or one day, on September 14th, I believe, Pashinyans went to Parliament and said, we have come to agreements for which we will be called traitors, and you will even try to remove us from power. So it was very clear even in September that they had come to agreements.
And I don’t think that this decision arrived on September 13th. It was a longstanding decision. And he said, the Europeans, the entire world community is saying to us, if you just lower the bar a little bit on Artsakh, then we will stand behind you. And we see what happened.
Asbed Bedrossian: Of course, before he came to power, it was Aliyev who was bitching and moaning to the international community that they want him to sign Artsakh away.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Right?
Hovik Manucharyan: It’s important to call things
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay.
Hovik Manucharyan: the right way, even though the incidents that we’re talking about are painful to remember and recount. And I think this is why many Armenians are not interested in politics anymore, because it’s just too painful to all put in your memory at the same time and relive again. But, you know, that’s our task here.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah. Let’s move on, Hovik.
Hovik Manucharyan: so
Asbed Bedrossian: Do you have a much lighter topic to go on to?
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, I mean, it doesn’t contain sexual mutilation, but it’s still as disgusting.
Hovik Manucharyan: So Azerbaijan essentially has turned Artsakh. It’s been working hard. It started with influencers and Instagram and whatever, but now they actually were able to arrange a large, large tour of foreign diplomats who visited occupied Artsakh, occupied Armenian territory, and Azerbaijan used this visit to paint a completely revisionist version of the region’s history at Gandzasar for instance presidential advisor Hikmet Hajiyev described the 13th century monastery, the Armenian monastery there as Caucasian Albanian even though Caucasian Albanians had
Asbed Bedrossian: Thank you.
Hovik Manucharyan: dissolved into the Armenian nation a long time ago
Asbed Bedrossian: Long before they came on the scene.
Hovik Manucharyan: And even originally, I think, you know, of course, this was an Armenian And also at the same time, Dadivank, named after Thaddeus, one of the apostles who visited Armenia. And, you know, he said these are Albanians and Hasan Jalalyan.
Asbed Bedrossian: Jalal
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. There’s a lot of evidence that many Armenian rulers and many rulers under Mongol occupation had Islamized their names. He was Armenian, and there are various historical references to this. And he said, you know, Hasan is Caucasian Albanian.
Hovik Manucharyan: what’s most disgusting is he essentially pointed to a replica a display copy of an Armenian manuscript with blank pages this is in front of serious diplomats saying, see this is Armenian history and it’s only one page, it’s an illustration and he flipped the pages and it’s all empty and this is Armenian history, it’s empty it was truly disgusting European diplomats looking at Hikmet Hajiyev with smiles and giggling even at his jokes. Of course, you know, all of those artifacts from the Gandzasar were transported to Armenia during 2020 anyway.
So those were true replicas, those are replicas essentially and display items in the museum. but of the diplomats said anything. is European diplomats. These are diplomats of an organization that Armenia is aspiring to join.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hovik, did I see some video where the U.S. ambassador to Baku was actually pretending to dance, like some kind of, pretending to do some kind of a local dance?
Hovik Manucharyan: had like parties or whatever and they danced. I mean, okay, they can go dance in Baku if they want. But it’s clear that it’s becoming more acceptable now for Azerbaijan to revise
Asbed Bedrossian: Hmm.
Hovik Manucharyan: Armenian history, deny Armenian identity, And this is almost being sanctioned by foreign countries, which is what’s most troubling.
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, I mean, their silence is basically tacit agreement,
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: right? When we have these faceless professional diplomats who come and go when their term is over, they don’t care what’s going on. They’re just doing their job and they’re just being told what to do from their
Hovik Manucharyan: No, I haven’t…
Asbed Bedrossian: center and then they disappear. Whatever happened to diplomats like John Evans, for example?
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: like these are these people somebody should tell them you are no John Evans Magdalena Grono
Hovik Manucharyan: So I have an objection with a professional qualifier. Yes, they are not professional diplomats because diplomacy also requires a certain level of honesty. And being able to present your case, obviously you’re not going to fight Hikmet Hajiyev, but laughing like a schoolgirl? I mean, Magdalena Grono is not a lightweight or a newcomer to the South Caucasus.
She’s a Czech diplomat, 25 years of experience in the foreign policy and conflict resolution. conflict negotiator. Is that what she does when negotiating with conflicting parties? Laugh at them?
Asbed Bedrossian: Smile and nod.
Hovik Manucharyan: And she has that experience in the South Caucasus. That is her area of
Asbed Bedrossian: Hmm.
Hovik Manucharyan: expertise. She was very deeply, she was an advisor to Charles Michel and she has, I would say she’s one of the probably critical people in the implementation of the Brussels process recognizing Artsakh as Azerbaijan. But okay, I mean, look, I understand if you…
Asbed Bedrossian: Kovig, Kovig, I know you’re very upset about this, but you’re
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: condemning all these foreign diplomats for doing this and that and whatever. Did Armenia open its mouth?
Hovik Manucharyan: Of course not.
Asbed Bedrossian: Did Armenia say anything? Seriously, I mean, just, yeah, exactly.
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, the current de facto leadership of Armenia, of course, stayed silent. And, of course, this adds insult to injury. I mean, for us, it was expected because, you know, what would you expect from someone who recognizes Artsakh as Azerbaijan, Magdalena Grono came to Armenia the next day and she was photographed visiting the but you know one photograph does not erase what you did because later in her tweet she said there are deeply diverging views and narratives referring to whether Gandzasar is Armenian and
Asbed Bedrossian: This is bullshit. This is just he said, she said ism, both side ism.
Hovik Manucharyan: yeah that’s both sides and you know if people excuse that for for her being a diplomat and trying to be diplomatic about it then she should be condemned very loudly for sponsoring essentially the revisionism in Azerbaijan. She should have said something, her office should have said something. So it’s okay to try to be diplomatic, but…
Asbed Bedrossian: And she’s not going to be accountable for anything because Armenian government doesn’t hold anyone accountable for stuff like this.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yep.
Asbed Bedrossian: You know, if it was something that she said against the Azeris, somebody would be immediately called from the Azeri embassy or the Azeri But the Armenians? Nothing.
Hovik Manucharyan: And, you know, it’s not like, you know, if you’re a diplomat,
Asbed Bedrossian: It’s sad.
Hovik Manucharyan: you sometimes can try to slide around, like, the facts, right, or, you know, say, okay, well, we have to investigate. But Azerbaijani policy of cultural erasure in Artsakh is not a mystery, right?
It’s evidenced by satellite imagery. just this spring in 2026 the Holy Mother of God Cathedral the main one that Armenians used in Stepanakert was demolished what did they do instead they built a park on it same with the other church in Stepanakert same with cemeteries nothing nothing gets past this hateful and genocidal regime and then you have this and I think this is interesting I also feel like Azerbaijan has ramped up its anti-Armean rhetoric because Hikmet Hajiyev is not a nobody he’s not a little high school kid he completed his education I believe in a native war college he’s a seasoned diplomat So I think his acting like this was also potentially a message to Armenia.
And I think that, you know, they’re now talking more vocally about constitutional changes. And I think it marks a dramatic shift from before the elections when they needed to be quiet to let Pashinyan win. But now they’re demanding their payout from Pashinyan.
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, remember, I think we noted this on our show right after the elections that the first foreign dignitary, quote-unquote, foreign dignitary who visited Armenia was Hikmet Hajiyev, who crossed the border where it’s around Tavush , and basically told Pashinyan that it was time to start delivering on the promises.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: So, that’s where we are right now.
Hovik Manucharyan: So, and the last point I want to make is that, you know, Pashinyan is constantly spewing nonsense about, you know, we are now in an era of, what’s it called, durable peace and dignified peace.
Asbed Bedrossian: Durable and dignified peace.
Hovik Manucharyan: and Azerbaijan is working really hard against Pashinyan making that point because you know
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, it’s not like Pashinyans ever going to rear his head and speak up.
Hovik Manucharyan: if yeah
Asbed Bedrossian: They can do whatever they want.
Hovik Manucharyan: yeah so this is not a dignified piece this is a I think one of the you know yes I mean we’ve seen examples of all of this in history occupation and repressional occupation but it is what it is and i think that you know it needs to be highlighted
Asbed Bedrossian: All right, I’m going to move on. Hovik, the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article detailing how the White House promised to authorize these NVIDIA AI chips to use in Armenia, the whole Firebird AI thing, this data center which has started in Hayastan, etc., to bring Armenia basically to the table to sign the Trip Zangezur Corridor project. This is back in August of 2025. So basically, in exchange for some AI chips and neurotechnologists, you know that these AI chips have to be basically re-upped every three to five years, right?
They get old. There are newer versions and everything, so they have to be redone every few years. and for which the licensing can be revoked anytime and for any reason. I mean, Trump could wake up in the morning and say he doesn’t feel like that licensing is a good deal for America and he can stop it.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: So for these ephemeral promises, basically, Pashinyan agreed to give 99 years of Armenian territory for the purposes and the benefit of Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Hovik Manucharyan: is incomprehensible to me how this data center would be of any strategic value to Armenia to begin with. So the only value it has is PR, essentially to quell people in Armenia saying, hey, you guys are entering the age of AI. Never mind that this data center, you’re not going to be able to use it for defense. controls by the US Department of Commerce and the US government. Never mind that, you won’t be able to use it for strategic purposes.
It’s just going to be an outsourced provider compute. And then, oh, guess what? Armenian tax is lower and Armenian environmental controls are lower. So, okay, build a data center and then tell you and tell the Armenian people that this is some kind of a benefit to you.
That’s what’s happening.
Asbed Bedrossian: I know you’re saying that it cannot be used for defense,
Hovik Manucharyan: But…
Asbed Bedrossian: but you and I have argued behind the scenes that it’s probably going to be used for offense and not by Armenia. It’s going to be used for offense by the United States. I believe that they need a presence locally in the region so that they can have extremely low latency, huge, massive amounts of compute right there. You can imagine who it’s going to be used against.
Hovik Manucharyan: I don’t want to have this argument over here, but, you
Asbed Bedrossian: That’s what I, well, all
Hovik Manucharyan: know, the only thing I’ll say is you can’t commingle DOD workloads with commercial
Asbed Bedrossian: right.
Hovik Manucharyan: workloads. So they would have to have some kind of a very strict segregation of workloads. And I don’t think that the U.S. would place that kind of sensitive workloads in a civilian center. But, I mean, let’s decide to argue about it elsewhere.
Asbed Bedrossian: What makes you think it’s going to be a really civilian center? We have no promises. We don’t know what the workloads are going to be in this thing.
Hovik Manucharyan: Okay, let’s…
Asbed Bedrossian: Anyway, we’re arguing. We’re arguing about something we said we’re not going to argue on the air. So let’s just move on. We’ll put the link to this article in the show notes.
It’s a Wall Street Journal article and it’s paywalled. So if you have access to Wall Street Journal, you can see the article.
Hovik Manucharyan: Okay, should we talk about Pashinyan’s voyage in Paris? So, apparently, Pashinyan went to this space summit in Paris.
Asbed Bedrossian: Ha ha.
Hovik Manucharyan: Why would Armenia, whose space program currently amounts to a one-kilogram CubeSat that it launched several years ago, and there are no active Armenian satellites in space, why would Armenia decide to go to a space summit?
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, Hovik, actually, Armenia has an active space program. They have two satellites, ARMSAT-1, which was, you know, made by the Spanish, Yeah. which was assembled and tested by Armenians in Armenia, but it was also told to us that it was educational purposes and the capacity building and stuff like that.
Hovik Manucharyan: But are they active? Are they active?
Asbed Bedrossian: No, they’re both done. There’s nothing in the sky anymore, I think.
Hovik Manucharyan: Okay. Well, you said active, that’s fine.
Asbed Bedrossian: and then like you said well the program is active there are no active things
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, I have a space program in multiple chat GPT windows
Asbed Bedrossian: objects in the sky
Hovik Manucharyan: right now. So if we go by CubeSat standards, many U.S. high schools would have a space program by now. So cut me slack for this bullshit. And it’s, again, the same thing.
It’s just a mockery. If you’re going to have a space program, dedicate resources to it. and show evidence of it. Right now, there is no evidence.
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, yeah, Hovik, but Pashinyans’ five-year program, which he presented in the National Assembly, the 2026 to 2031 plan that he proposed, does call for some kind of a space program or additional satellites, etc. Now, he could have sent, for something like this, he could have just sent his minister of high technology. But we need to really take a look at the one-on-one that he had with Macron to guess at the real objective of this visit.
And you look at the official readout, and it says that Pashinyan and Macron discussed the Armenia-France strategic partnership, and I’m going to air quote that, economic cooperation and Armenia’s economic diversification. There’s a lot of air quoting here. The French-backed Bargushat Tunnel, and I don’t actually know this project very well. And then they discussed regional processes and steps toward strengthening peace.
And finally, there was cooperation in space as well.
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, as an Armenian, I have to dutifully remind our listeners and viewers about French cooperation in space, because France played a major role in launching Azerbaijan’s space program.
Azerbaijan’s first satellite Azerespace-1 AzerSky I believe many other sort of satellites and ground stations were developed, designed, launched and also maintained by France until maybe they had a falling out but I still don’t know if they’re not actively cooperating and guess what those are not CubeSats, those are billion dollar, multi-billion dollar satellites that don’t just fall out of the sky, that actually have a propulsion system and are able to maintain orbit and were used against Armenia in various wars that Azerbaijan had over the last five years. So how about that for cooperation, Auschwitz?
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, yeah, but like I said, from the readout, you can tell that this was really more of a foreign policy visit than some kind of a
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: space summit thing, right?
Hovik Manucharyan: It was a pretense for, I would say, Pashinyan to go to Macron and cry about Putin and ask for advice what to do.
Asbed Bedrossian: Exactly. exactly. I mean, Macron has done an amazing job of making believe to Pashinyan that he is a great friend.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, and a leader.
Asbed Bedrossian: I don’t know what to say.
Hovik Manucharyan: Look, can we just send Pashinyan to space and be over with him?
Asbed Bedrossian: Let’s just call him Spaceman Spiff and say we did,
Hovik Manucharyan: Alright.
Asbed Bedrossian: okay?
Asbed Bedrossian: Hovik, I wanted to go to a remarkable financial story that’s developing in Armenia. So, in July alone, roughly $900 million flowed into Armenian individual bank accounts from abroad, with about three-quarters of it coming from Russia. And over the first seven months of this year, the total reached several billion dollars, and that’s multiples, like many, many times above the levels that Armenia used to see. before the Russia-Iran war, and even a couple of years ago. And you can’t say these are simple family remittances anymore.
This is not grandma in Yerevan sitting and getting 500 bucks from his grandson who’s working in Moscow or somewhere or driving trucks and stuff like that. According to the central bank, categorizations for this money can include family support and savings, sure, but also investment transactions, cross-border trading, business settlements, re-exports, and funds just moving between accounts. So it seems like the real story is that Armenia has become an important financial junction the Russian-connected money.
Hovik Manucharyan: is interesting that we see this surge coming now.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah.
Hovik Manucharyan: And, you know, of course, we talked about some of the reasons for it. There are Western sanctions against Russia, restrictions on Russian banks. you know if there’s any indication of uh you know what’s accounting for this capital
Asbed Bedrossian: Not really, because I think that as I was reading,
Hovik Manucharyan: flow
Asbed Bedrossian: some of the details said that the information is not available on the individual account level. So you don’t know whose account it went from to whose account and things like that. We certainly don’t have access to detailed line itemization like that.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: But essentially, we’re talking about mass flows.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: and generally the CBA, the Central Bank of Armenia, categorizations is what kind of indicate to us what kind of use the money is being, you know, what it’s being used for.
Hovik Manucharyan: But also it’s not, I would say unusual because a lot of Armenian migrant workers go to Russia during the summer and start working.
Asbed Bedrossian: Sure.
Hovik Manucharyan: And this underscores…
Asbed Bedrossian: And one thing, there was indication that that money has also increased.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: So we’re not indicating that something has replaced that
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: stuff. No, Armenians are sending more money from Russia to Armenia.
Hovik Manucharyan: But this underscores essentially this, you know, I think elephant in the room financially of the divorce between Armenia and Russia. All of these people, A, will not be able to go to Russia to work and therefore have to find some other sources of income. Or B, even if they are allowed to go to work, the banking system might simply not allow them to do that.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hauvik, so I just want to say not all of this should
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: be considered like suspicious, illegitimate, or sanctionable. Some of it is definitely legit. It’s just that these inflows are massive inflows are coming into Armenia. And let’s say two-thirds or three-quarters also leave and they do business in other places. right and for me I think that we should be considering what the risk is to Armenia of these large flows because there is a risk to the Armenian banking system.
Western sanctions could tighten so that there’s less of this Russia involvement Armenian banks are going to start facing compliance pressure. Russia is going to impose stronger capital controls Armenia-Russia relations and they’re deteriorating. So that’s also a risk. And the international banks, I mean, all of these things could come together and they could put all of the financial system in Armenia at risk, including the drum.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: The drum is highly dependent
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: on these large flows to Armenia, the remittances essentially. And now we have these large flows that enter and get out and could be Western sanctions prevent these things. And there could be the Russians who say, we’re not going to do this business through Armenia anymore.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, a lot of incoming turbulence.
Asbed Bedrossian: So there are risks. Yeah.
Hovik Manucharyan: the Armenian banking sector is controlled, I mean, by truly capitalist, in the bad sense, you know, people where they have made tremendous amounts of profit every single turn. opportunity when the ukraine war started they had made like uh um you know the transaction fees so high that they had made you know they make money out of every single transaction uh but now i think if uh i think the banking sector is a cornerstone of armenian economic growth so if that goes away uh then uh you know we’re gonna see a lot of uh we’re gonna see a lot of
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, all you had to do was basically look at the profits that Armenian banks reported on a quarterly basis to know how well they’re doing.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, yeah.
Hovik Manucharyan: I want to talk about some news that not many outlets and media covered, which is this, you know, discussion, this meeting between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mehdi Sobhani, who used to be the ambassador in Armenia. and they actually discussed closer coordination in the South Caucasus.
They underscored cooperation through the 3 plus 3 platform and infrastructure projects for North-South communication, but they also said that they were going to open a coordination center, some kind of a coordination center on South Caucasus. now I don’t want to read too much into this but I think that this also, if you’re looking at it this also is circumstantial evidence that Russia is relying more on Iran or maybe partnership with Iran in managing the South Caucasus so that’s the reason why I want to talk about it there are also reports that Russia may create problems for the implementation of TRIP We have Iranian authorities.
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, I mean, Russia has said that, you know, TRIP is going to have a lot of problems becoming real without their involvement.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: So I think you should, it’s not even reading between the lines. Listen to what they’re saying. They’re not going to let it happen without them.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yep.
Asbed Bedrossian: And, you know, when I heard about this coordination center, I thought about the coordination center that Azerbaijan and Turkey had set up. You know, the Turks had set up some kind of coordination center initially. and then they moved it to Artsakh, Adam.
Hovik Manucharyan: Acha da!
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, okay. So I wonder if it’s going to be anything like that,
Hovik Manucharyan: No, I mean, it’s…
Asbed Bedrossian: if it’s going to be, I mean, the two countries do have a strategic partnership.
Hovik Manucharyan: I don’t think it’ll be military to begin with, but I think that there are signs that essentially the foreign policy on the South Caucasus will be coordinated. So this is at the foreign ministry level.
Let’s just watch for this. when we were talking with in our previous episode he said that without Russian help Iran cannot do anything in Armenia in the South Caucasus and I think that’s right but is this a sign that essentially they are cooperating and if so how much will that cooperation go Russia cedes Armenia to Iran iranian influence um then iran is not going to give that back one of the scenarios for if the iran war spreads into the south cox is that iran may occupy actually south armenia and if it does i don’t know if they’ll uh uh you know
Asbed Bedrossian: They’ll give it back.
Hovik Manucharyan: be so easy to relinquish it uh so you know we’re dealing with very dangerous countries but i would is more responsible more neighborly than others but still you know no country
Asbed Bedrossian: You know, that scenario is so dangerous for Armenia,
Hovik Manucharyan: occupies land and then gives it away
Asbed Bedrossian: I don’t even want to think about it.
Hovik Manucharyan: It’s probably less dangerous than Azerbaijan occupying Armenia,
Asbed Bedrossian: It’s very dangerous.
Hovik Manucharyan: but I don’t want to do false equivalencies.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, but still. Yeah, but you know, the Iranian authorities just in the past week, I think that they demanded that the trip defense work be carried out exclusively by Armenian armed forces and by armed forces of a third country already present in the territory of Armenia. I wonder what force that would be.
Asbed Bedrossian: anyway we just learned in the news of course that Armin Grigorian got a new job working for some western funded NGO a project surprisingly related to TRIP initially I thought he went to work for Sokolov but that wasn’t true so he hasn’t moved that far away from anti-Armenian activities so what do you think is going on here? I mean, Do you find it a little bit weird that Arman Grigoryan got kind of summarily relieved from a job that he was in for like eight years, and then suddenly he wasn’t doing the job right or something like that? Or what could have caused this apparent abrupt firing?
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, it was pretty abrupt, and I think that most analysts are stumped. And I think that there is a trace of geopolitics involved. I mean, the reasons for it are geopolitical, but it can be viewed from multiple angles. And, for instance, is it related to Azerbaijan’s policies? because for eight years, at least for the last six years, he was a loyal puppet and a partner to Hikmet Hajiyev.
Right? They held meetings. Hikmet Hajiyev told him what to do, and Armenia loyally did that. The timing of the events is very interesting.
Like, I was watching the latest installment of the news of the day by Hakob Badalyan on Arabot. program, we’ll include a link. And so he lists the sequence of things that happened. First, we had the June 7th, the Pashinyan so-called victory announced with 10% of the bells counted, and then June 14th, one week after, Hikmet Hajiyev becomes, as we talked, becomes the first official to visit Armenia after the elections, and it was his own first visit to Armenia. And right about then, Azerbaijan, I think, aggressively ramped up its rhetoric about the constitutional changes again.
So before the elections, they were soft, and then afterwards they ramped up. So it’s very interesting. I would have loved to have been a fly in the wall listening to that conversation that Hajiyev and Armin Grikorian had. But what happened was, then afterwards, on July 2, we already talked that Alen Simonyan relinquished his parliamentary role.
It was reported, I mean, after the elections, they had to, within the civil contract party , they had to who the next nominee for parliamentary Speaker of Parliament was going to be. And on July 2, we heard the news that Alen Simonyan had withdrawn,
Asbed Bedrossian: Actually, they said he had lost the backing of the Civil Contract leadership.
Hovik Manucharyan: saying that he lost his backing. And it was a very clever leak, because I thought, wow, the opposition has some really good moles in civil contract, What really happened was I think that civil contract leaked this. And then on August 13, we heard that Armen Grigoryan is dismissed and Alen Simonyan is appointed. So now we know that this was a carefully guarded secret.
And what’s interesting is the media started publishing this two hours before the appointment. Normally, there is a long time for something that is happening for so long. Media usually finds out and prints it. But this was such a tightly guarded secret.
To me, it underscores the importance of this move. So this move, the Armen Grigoryan was important for someone geopolitically.
Asbed Bedrossian: You mean the replacement of Armen Grigoryan by Alen Simonyan?
Hovik Manucharyan: I think more firing. I think that it was not like, hey, you know, you need to put Alen Simonyan now.
Asbed Bedrossian: Ha.
Hovik Manucharyan: It was like, hey, we don’t want Armen Grigoryan.
Asbed Bedrossian: Get somebody else.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, get somebody else.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay.
Hovik Manucharyan: And then on September 1st, Hajiyev and Alen Simonyan met. I mean, there is a lot of room for speculation. I don’t want to go into it, but all of this is very interesting. And I mean, the question I ask is, was it like, you know, Hikmet Hajiyev, who didn’t like how, you know, Armen Grigoryan didn’t bow down, like, you know, deep enough for him when he came to Armenia?
And the ramping up of Azerbaijani rhetoric around the same time, I mean,
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, Hovik, Pashinyan said that this was a routine shuffle post-election.
Hovik Manucharyan: is it a signal that they don’t like Alen Simonyan?
Asbed Bedrossian: Do you believe that?
Hovik Manucharyan: Of course not, because then Armen Grigoryan, who has benefited royally from this coup that they had in 2018, would have not accepted a private company position. So obviously he is holding some resentment for this. It’s notable that he didn’t attend Alen Simonyan’s, what is it, like fifth wedding, or sorry, third wedding or something.
Asbed Bedrossian: Ha ha
Hovik Manucharyan: which was presented as one of the royal princes in Armenia being married. And likewise, Simonyan didn’t attend Grigoryan’s book presentation. So that was interesting drama. So I think he held some personal resentment.
But the real reason is that this was geopolitical. And I don’t know which power was behind this. Was it Azerbaijan? Was it maybe Russia?
I guess it remains to be seen. Maybe one day he’ll write a book about this incident.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah. Yeah.
Hovik Manucharyan: Until…
Asbed Bedrossian: I mean, honestly, I cannot make enough even speculate. Probably shouldn’t even speculate.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: But I don’t know exactly what the purpose of some of these shuffles are. But obviously, there’s an internal logic, and we don’t know what it is.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yep.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay, Hovik, let’s close our show with our corruptions and persecutions.
Asbed Bedrossian: We don’t have a whole lot, but one thing that happened was Gagik Tsarukyan, his pretrial detention was extended by another two months. Surprise, surprise. And then we haven’t talked a whole lot about Alen Ghevondyan. This is an Artsakh analyst, and he was arrested back in June
Hovik Manucharyan: Before the elections.
Asbed Bedrossian: before the elections, probably because Pashinyan did not like his Facebook posts or something like that. The actual charge is he made public calls on his Facebook account to seize power and forcibly overthrow the constitutional order. This is a common citizen. He’s not armed.
He’s not a terrorist. And he can somehow overthrow the constitutional order of the entire country. So I think they just tried to shut him up and threw him in jail. Three months later, a judge has basically dismissed the case.
Hovik Manucharyan: That’s essentially the proof, and that is a pattern that the Pashinyan regime repeats over and over. They arrest someone without any basis, and then two months later, three months later, they might release him, they might keep him in detention for three more cycles. It’s just a way to put pressure on the opposition and keep them occupied.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, yeah.
Hovik Manucharyan: and they use this as propaganda right they used also they use this as propaganda saying see the opposition is trying to overthrow us it was all over the media and now like the court basically ruled it as baseless
Asbed Bedrossian: Pashinyan himself has said, if you don’t like us, overthrow us. But if you do, as I say, I will throw you in jail for absolutely no reason, and you’ll come out on one. Never mind. Anyway, so thanks for listening, everybody.
All the links will be in the show notes to many of the articles that we relied on for our research. And so this today is 15. I guess it’s after midnight again, Hovik. The Week in Review for September 13.
Thanks for listening to us.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, prime time for growing recording.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, and we look forward to your support. Moral, mental, emotional, financial. And so you can go to podcasts.groong.org slash donate and make a contribution. Thank you very much.
Hovik Manucharyan: And I just want to add that stay tuned because this week we’re going to have two more podcasts, I believe, before the next we can review on Sunday or Monday. For those who understand Armenia, I recently gave an interview to Alpha News on the topic of, you know, developments in AI, specifically the AI data center in Armenia. you know, we appreciate you looking at watching it and let me know what you think. And yeah, well,
Asbed Bedrossian: We’ll put that link also.
Hovik Manucharyan: sure. Thank you. This is Hovik Manucharyan.
Asbed Bedrossian: And I’m Asbed Bedrossian, and we’ll talk to you next week.
Hovik Manucharyan: Bye-bye.