Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hello everyone, this is Groong’s Week in Review for September 27, 2026.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hovik, greetings.
Hovik Manucharyan: Hello, Asbed. We have a lot of news to talk about. And even if we manage to talk about the things that we’re planning, we’ll probably cover half of the major news that happened in Armenia.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah.
Hovik Manucharyan: So let’s just get going.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay, well, I’ll lead then. So this September 27, which was two days ago, fell on a Sunday, exactly as it did in 2020, the day when Azerbaijan launched an unprovoked war on Artsakh, Nagorno-Karabakh, which finally culminated three years later in September of 2023 with the complete ethnic cleansing of Artsakh out of its 150,000 native Armenian population. And today, Azerbaijan is busy bulldozing Armenian churches, cemeteries, and anything left behind by that population. What’s more sinister, Hovik, it’s suing Armenia for theft and vandalism of any cultural artifacts that were saved by that population from Azeri savagery and barbarism.
They want Armenian religious artifacts back so that they can destroy them or polish them of their Armenian inscriptions and claim that they belong to Caucasian Albanian or Udi or some other. long as it’s not Armenian, it’s going to be fine. And it’s their heritage. Well, the Armenian government’s response? Mum, right?
Nothing about any of this stuff. Well, actually, it’s not mum. solemn day of commemoration of the thousands of our fallen heroes and we say 5,000 people died in that war and tens of thousands were wounded soldiers families and and as thousands streamed to Yerablur cemetery to lay down flowers the government’s propaganda tv armenian public tv aired a tata concert what were your thoughts about this
Hovik Manucharyan: What else could there be besides disgust? The fact that we have a foreign body inside our country and inside our organism that we cannot remove, apparently.
Asbed Bedrossian: You know
Hovik Manucharyan: It
Asbed Bedrossian: what they call that?
Hovik Manucharyan: is just a dream.
Asbed Bedrossian: They call that a cancer.
Hovik Manucharyan: Exactly. it’s a Turkish and Azeri dream come true, essentially. I think, and it wasn’t just a concert, of course. Unlike last years, previous years, no Civil Contract official was seen at Yerablur that day. No one even wrote a simple Facebook post acknowledging the day or memorializing it, All of them are basically faceless nobodies, All of them are basically faceless nobodies, all there to push buttons on Pashinyan’s behalf.
Asbed Bedrossian: It’s just unbelievable that there are so many people, so many sellout Armenians ready to do this.
Hovik Manucharyan: Even those that supposedly fought, you know, and went to the front or whatever. And that’s not the end of it. It seems like on that day or just a day before that, the fresco or, you know, essentially a makeshift image of one of the heroes of the Artsakh war, Albert Hovhannisyan, who was immortalized.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yes.
Hovik Manucharyan: He was an artillerist.
Asbed Bedrossian: It’s that iconic image of the Armenian soldier who is firing that artillery piece, that cannon.
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, his picture was wiped clean from the
Asbed Bedrossian: Everybody knows the picture.
Hovik Manucharyan: wall of the Victory Park in Yerevan. It was one of the more prominent such pictures. And essentially a complete blackholing of Armenian memory is going on. I have no words to describe the level that this is taking right now in Armenia. suspicion is that it’s going to be even more pronounced as the months pass. all I can say is eternal glory to all of our heroes, both alive and past.
Not all Armenians, of course, feel this way, but when you have the power of state media, when you have the totalitarian control over society. We discussed this with Pietro Shakarian a few episodes back. It’s essentially neo-Stalinism. The only thing missing is the executions of any opposition members because everything else is there.
And there’s a big fight right now over identity and memory and it’s troubling.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, well, today’s version is not necessarily lining up and shooting them. It’s the pretrial detentions forever that come and go. And after like months and months or in some cases years, they are let go. The charges are dismissed and they’re let go.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Meanwhile, these people lose the time of their lives, their activities, their opposition, and everything is deflated. That’s what’s going on. I only have one word of it, cancer.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay, let’s move on. I want to talk a little bit about the PACE report that came out that sort of surprised me, actually, by putting a tiny little bit of criticism about the June 7 election. because while the Parliamentary Assembly’s report concluded that Armenia’s parliamentary elections on June 7 offered voters a genuine choice and were well run, it said, they surprisingly criticized the CEC, the Central Election Commission, for annulling the results at three polling stations and not scheduling a re-vote.
And they claimed that the excluded results could have affected the election outcome. ultimately of course the report doesn’t do anything they just say that they were well run and they make some recommendations for amending electoral law to address the issue in the future of course i don’t believe any of this i’m sorry to say i think the the laws and everything are probably good as long as you have a government that just does not care about democracy or the opposition or plurality in voices, you can’t put anybody or any kind of a law. The law is only as effective as the enforcement of it, and that’s not happening.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: In fact, it’s the government that is coming in and causing the fraud.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah,
Asbed Bedrossian: Were you surprised at all that this tiny amount of criticism was embedded in this report?
Hovik Manucharyan: No, I think it’s a minimum they could have done, but also we should mention that the OSCE/ODIHR finally released their report with similar findings, but that doesn’t change the fact they essentially blessed, even if criticizing, they blessed Pashinyan’s usurpation of power one more time. and the PACE has no binding power. They’re just a bunch of people. I guess it’s a big club to debate forum. Their resolutions have no binding power and we know what Europe really thinks about Armenia and who their partner in in the Caucasus is.
It’s Azerbaijan and Turkey and they just pay lip service to Armenia only because Armenia is needed to them insofar as they alienate Russia and are a thorn in Russia’s side.
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, the reason why this report surprised me with its criticism, Hovik, is because,
Hovik Manucharyan: That’s the only role for Armenia today.
Asbed Bedrossian: of course, they talked forever and ever about foreign interference, and they explicitly named Russia. But the reality is that Europe explicitly endorsed and funded Pashinyan to win this election. So it was really surprising that there was this tiny… was one analyst, the Armen Badalyan, that I read, he believes that this was embedded as warning to Pashinyan, saying that when you go and see Putin , because that summit is coming up sometime in October, the warning says basically do not make any concessions. Because we know what you did, and we will turn on you.
So that was one analyst who was saying, who was trying to explain why there was such criticism embedded.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. To me, this is not even a point of discussion. We know that the entire election was stolen, faked by Pashinyan, and no amount of crocodile tears from parliamentarians or Council of Europe debate club members is needed. And, you know, it’s an insult to injury, I would say.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hovik, it’s important to expand on what you just said, okay, about those three precincts that are in question, and the ones that as quote-unquote could have changed the results of the election itself. Let’s be very explicit. Pashinyan did not get 50% of the vote. It was 49.81.
And five of the parliamentary mandates had gone to Gagik Tsarukyan’s prosperous Armenia, the Bargavach Hayastan. And had that stood, then Civil Contract would have barely had a small majority in parliament, means that they could not have ruled without alliances with the opposition
Hovik Manucharyan: Or coalition.
Asbed Bedrossian: parties. There could have been real democracy. And so they went and basically changed and annulled those three precincts. They invalidated the mandates that the Prosperous Armenia would have gotten.
And as a result, those five mandates were distributed. Three of them went to Civil Contract, and that gave them the three-fifths majority in the parliament, and the rest went to the opposition. The other two parties got two of those seats. Now, what this also means is that even through falsification, they were not able to get two-thirds majority, which is what they had promised Turkey and Azerbaijan in order to change the Armenian constitution.
But still, with three-fifths majority, they can do all the damage we’re going to talk about. For example, without including the opposition, they’ll be harassing the church and things like that. We’ll talk about those in a moment.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. And Pashinyan was saying if he doesn’t get constitutional majority, there’ll be war by
Asbed Bedrossian: By September, that’s right.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, today is September 30th, so I’m just wondering whether today will be the day. But, of course, it was all bullshit. But, you know, we know that Pashinyan is essentially now expected to implement, by hook or crook, all the demands from Turkey and Azerbaijan with the tacit and sometimes not-so-tacit support of the EU. Let’s go to the UN.
Hovik Manucharyan: Last week was the UN General Assembly and it is always a rancorous affair with various world leaders and countries essentially fighting it out in the podium. And there were a lot of interesting speeches. The Israel you know, fact that Netanyahu was completely boycotted by most of the UN. But let’s talk about our fearless leader Pashinyan’s speech.
First of all, before going, I think, to the UN, he held another meeting with Erdogan. Too bad Erdogan didn’t have a book published this time, or else he would hug
Asbed Bedrossian: Ha ha
Hovik Manucharyan: the book like he’s a fangirl. He, of course, met Ursula and everyone else in the neocon and neoliberal establishments. and of course Erdogan invited Pashinyan to COP 31 in Antalya I bet there’s going to be a lot of food
Asbed Bedrossian: How could he pass?
Hovik Manucharyan: there’s going to be free food, so why not and Pashinyan’s speech at the General Assembly was one of the most supplicative or supplicant, I don’t know the right word speeches ever However, he praised Turkey and Azerbaijan as, and he validated them essentially as peace-loving countries. And Armenia is making progress on peace. He, of course, praised Trump and said without Trump, this peace would not be possible. And, of course, he said he’s eager to see the Turkish border open. overall it was a non-event just a slavish you know
Asbed Bedrossian: It was a photo-op event for him.
Hovik Manucharyan: it was a slavish performance just to please Erdogan and Aliyev he also made a whimper about expecting to see detained Armenians in Baku released Pashinyan, we believe you yeah
Asbed Bedrossian: He hasn’t lifted a finger, as far as I can tell.
Hovik Manucharyan: yeah
Asbed Bedrossian: In fact, I’ve said before on this
Hovik Manucharyan: you
Asbed Bedrossian: show, I think he conspires with the Azerbaijani government to keep them there, because those people coming back to Yerevan will be trouble for him.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, so that’s…
Asbed Bedrossian: They are very popular, they are politically savvy, they have suffered for the Armenian nation, they will be trouble for the Civil Contract people.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hovik, let me take a quick aside I know you want to talk about Bayramov also but you mentioned Israel it was actually more interesting than any of Pashinyan’s boring stuff to follow the war of words between Erdogan and Netanyahu each one of them accused the other of genocide and ethnic cleansing Erdogan accused Netanyahu of genocide in Gaza This is the Armenian genocide, the recognition of which Netanyahu
Hovik Manucharyan: Next to no one, I guess. And they both, you know.
Asbed Bedrossian: tried very hard in the Knesset to make sure that there was no vote for political reason. right uh so what can we say i you know what i was reading about all these things and there were a lot of armenians both on and off of social media talking about it uh thanking netanyahu and blah blah blah and i’m thinking this is just political mudslinging don’t drum me up for this bullshit it really has nothing to do with the armenian uh cause or the armenian genocide side.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. If I was the president of Armenia, I know you like to be the president, but if I was
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah.
Hovik Manucharyan: the president, I would just take the podium and say, just both of you shut the fuck up and don’t talk about the Armenian genocide. Both of you are genociders and Israel specifically is a prime sponsor of the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Artsakh. So that’s all I can say.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, yeah.
Hovik Manucharyan: so let’s go to Bayramov and his speech I think set new precedent in terms of and gave us clues about Azerbaijan’s diplomacy in the coming months and years said now there is de facto peace de jure there will be peace only after compliance with their demands which includes constitutional change and Azerbaijan has said it has unilaterally lifted embargo on Armenia allowing goods to
Asbed Bedrossian: He put a great good guy face on Azerbaijan.
Hovik Manucharyan: transit through and selling Armenia yeah but what was I think noteworthy speech was that you know how when Pashinyan was asked all this Western Azerbaijan language coming from Baku, well previously it was done through NGOs that Pashinyan’s excuse was these are just NGOs, just pay attention to what the leaders say and the leaders don’t say anything. Well, Azerbaijan’s leadership has spoken an international forum, I believe. Bayramov talked about the return, so-called return, which is really just settlement of Armenia by Azerbaijanis.
No mention of ethnically cleansed Armenians from Artsakh or even Baku and Sumgait, but he said that they’re going to work towards settling Azerbaijanis in Armenia, supposedly the ones who Armenia during the fighting, but he mentioned the number of hundreds of thousands
Asbed Bedrossian: Like in the 90s?
Hovik Manucharyan: and there was never that many Azerbaijanis in Armenia. In any case,
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, did anybody mention the hundreds of thousands of Armenians who were pogromed out of Baku and Sumgait and Shahumyan and Artsakh?
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. And of course, Erdogan’s speech was also, you know, he praised Pashinyan, good little boy, fulfilling all of our demands, also thanked Trump and whatever. But it was interesting. I saw a comparison of his speech at the same event, like I think three or four years ago. he was complaining that Armenia was not moving on the Zangezur corridor and he was not agreeing on that.
And he was very critical of Pashinyan at the time. So that was before, of course, the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh and before the trip. So he got what he wanted. Anyway, I think let’s move
Asbed Bedrossian: Hovik,
Hovik Manucharyan: from the UN.
Asbed Bedrossian: that’s interesting that you say that he got what he wanted because my impression, of course those things which you mentioned are very important, but my impression was that Bayramov was actually less focused on Armenia at this time and more focused on a lot of other platforms that he had meetings with like the Global South leaders and the Economic Cooperation Organization, the OIC, the Islamic countries, etc., etc. So I felt like they have moved on to bigger fish to fry than Armenia because Armenia is kind of a done deal. And they are considering themselves a middle power rather than a small power. You didn’t get that impression at all?
Hovik Manucharyan: I mean, I did get that impression, but yeah, I mean, I’m just analyzing it from the content related to Armenia and the fact that they brought this up at the UN means that this is going to be now, I mean, this was always a state policy, but this is now going to be now that the elections are over. the western Azerbaijan issue is going to be a prime component of Azerbaijan’s policy and maybe even a precondition yes I think to deny that Azerbaijan is now close or a candidate for middle power as much as we hate to say that for a genocidal country that is still carrying forth its genocidal policies I think Azerbaijan allows, and if Georgia and Armenia fold, then yes, Azerbaijan has a chance of becoming that middle power, and we should not deny that.
Hovik Manucharyan: Another interesting thing that happened, I think it’s noteworthy, there was this speech by Steve Witkoff, the godfather of TRIPP , the incompetent diplomat, and I guess a very competent real estate investor. He was talking about his brilliant foreign policy and he said something like whenever he has a question about Armenia or Azerbaijan calls his friend Tom Barrack to put him in touch with
Asbed Bedrossian: Hmm.
Hovik Manucharyan: his two experts on Armenia that he regularly consults whenever he has questions about the region. Guess who are those two experts, Asbed?
Asbed Bedrossian: Tom Barrack is the U.S. ambassador in Turkey, a really, really good friend of Armenians, right?
Hovik Manucharyan: Yes. Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Who are they, Hovik?
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, one of the experts is named Hakan and the other is named Ibrahim. Hakan Fidan and İbrahim Kalın. Hakan Fidan is currently a foreign minister of Turkey. He was formerly head of the MIT, or MIT, the Turkish intelligence.
Asbed Bedrossian: Mm-hmm.
Hovik Manucharyan: and İbrahim Kalın was formerly senior advisor to Erdogan and is currently the chief of Turkish intelligence. So he has a comfortable old job.
Asbed Bedrossian: So these are the people who are advising Witkoff on how to deal with Armenia.
Hovik Manucharyan: former… Yes, these are the people. So all of these brainless Armenians, and I’m sorry, you know, who are cheering TRIPP, this project about TRIPP and how it’s going to save Armenia, Do you realize that this policy is being controlled directly by, or advised and influenced directly by, two current and former heads,
Asbed Bedrossian: The deepest state of Turkey.
Hovik Manucharyan: heads of the intelligence of Turkey? Congratulations to us. Anyway.
Asbed Bedrossian: Let’s move. Let’s talk a little bit about the church situation.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. So Pashinyan, of course, you know, when Pashinyan included the Armenian church in his pre-election campaign, still, you know, but he didn’t campaign that much about it. It was just included in the program. Many people, I think, secretly hoped that, not many people, like the people who are not in the opposition, who we talked to, they said, well, I hope it all works out, you know.
And then, you know, they hoped that he would forget about it, right? Then he included this in his five-year government program, and there were still hopes that it would go away. But last week, we found that Pashinyan is more committed to this agenda than of those who gave him the benefit of the doubt believed.
So the Information and Public Relations Center, which is a so-called think tank, is funded directly by the government of Armenia. it’s also known as the POAK and there are many news stories about this organization this so-called think tank hiring fake controlling a lot of the fake news in Armenia through these fake profiles on Facebook and social media so essentially this think tank published a report more than 70 pages in two languages at least about the church, the state of the church, characterizing it as a crisis.
If you read it, basically, if you take all of Pashinyan’s speeches and hate speech and drivel about the Armenian church and try to compress it into a report, this is that report. the report, I guess, had a recommendation to remove the catholicos to send them to retirement. And it included a roadmap of how to do it. This is a very concerning issue, of course.
We’re talking about it in I think sarcasm because, I don’t know, it is the most extreme form of intervention against the church by a government that claims to be democratic and is cheered for being so by everyone in the world, like the European is the Western world. read through some of the reports. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but it just basically, even if you read the links, it’s linking to tabloid newspapers and websites and even social media posts. And then it’s also citing people, sources that it won’t name. And it’s the same drivel.
The first part of the report is about the violation of his vow to celibacy.
So a government think tank is publishing a report, headlining the report with, hey, we think the Catholicos is not celibate, despite the I think tabloid nature of the content you can see that it was a really polished effort it had a lot of people work on it and if I I read a lot of reports from Armenian think tanks and Armenian governments and I’ve rarely seen that the English version of the report is the editorial style in the language is very very well produced almost like if it was written by a native speaker. it was apparent that a lot of work went into it to polish it. Yeah, so that’s what we’re faced with.
I think that we’re going to be faced with an all-out attack against the Church in the coming months and years. I don’t know how long this process will take. It’s troubling. And there was even talk about the Armenian, the so-called Parliament of Armenia. who came there through fraudulent elections, they’re probably going to hold a, they’re going to have a parliamentary committee hearing on this.
And they’re going to probably get like a six month standing or temporary committee to do hearings on this. And I can just imagine how they’ll flood the media every day with content from this committee, mocking the Catholicos, calling him by his secular name, inviting some of the bishops who he had defrocked. So they’re going to secure a big media landscape in support of their campaign against the Catolic Cross. And my worry is that I’m not seeing how the opposition is trying to counteract this.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, I also don’t. First of all, Hovik, I just want to say, I never thought that Pashinyan was unserious about this. I believe that he put it in his platform so that he could actually claim that with the win in the election, the people have given him a mandate to attack the church. He’s done that for just about everything on his platform.
So he actually stuck it. It was a late addition to his platform because somebody advised him that put it on there and then you can claim it. by the way, I’m sure it came from the other side of the border, to put it in there and then be able to claim that the people gave him a mandate to reform the church. I don’t believe any of it is going to be successful. There’s no way that any of it is legal.
The separation of the church and the state are part of the Armenian constitution. The only way that they have a little bit of an in is to claim that there are, for example, financial or property mismanagement and things like that. And yes, you can get the Catholicos or a bunch of bishops detained and bring them to court every day for months and months and make a spectacle out of it. Yeah, this can be done.
But if that is the end goal, because I don’t believe that they have any legal force to remove the Catholicos. that we have seen lot of the verdicts on the part of Pashinyan and his cronies crowing about removing the Catholicos even before it was part of the campaign, that will go in court as premeditation of something that is constitutionally forbidden for them. So I don’t think they’re going to be able to succeed. But then what does this mean? Is the goal the spectacle?
Or is the goal to do church reform, and what is the church reform that they want? Is it the celibacy of the bishops? First of all, nothing is proven. And second, if they go and they do some DNA tests and they prove celibacy, is it illegal for a priest or a bishop to have a child?
Hovik Manucharyan: So
Asbed Bedrossian: It may be something that is punishable ecclesiastically inside the church, but that’s completely outside of the government’s purview.
Hovik Manucharyan: So, all I can say is that Pashinyan has made so many anti-constitutional changes over the last years, including handing over Armenian territory through TRIPP, Artsakh, everything else, that this will be the, you know, I don’t know if this will be on the top five of his crimes, but I am worried that it will affect the unity of the Armenian church one way or another. You know, we and yeah, the celibacy stuff like, you know. I wonder, like, if the like Turkish MIT, the Israeli Mossad all like had a big meeting in Langley, Virginia with the CIA and said, how can we, you know, make this report sound better?
OK, let’s let’s put the celibacy part first. You know, that tells you the quality and what they’re going after. And the attack against the Armenian church is geopolitical.
Hovik Manucharyan: I mean, maybe it’s just the Mossad and MIT, or maybe it’s just, you know, MIT and Langley or whatever. But certain forces in the region need the Armenian church to shut up about national values, about Armenian identity, and allow for this erasure of our memory to
Asbed Bedrossian: This is coming together with a constitutional change as well,
Hovik Manucharyan: continue. I truly believe that. Yes.
Asbed Bedrossian: okay? Because when the Church goes to Bern in Switzerland and speaks of the right of return and the Artsakh population, the Nagorno-Karabakh population, you know that the Church has a constitutional mandate to protect the Armenian identity. so when Pashinyan says that they’re becoming political they’re not supposed to be political no, actually they are required to speak up on those issues so who is it
Hovik Manucharyan: Asbed, the church is a millennial institution that is outside of the
Asbed Bedrossian: who wants the church to shut up?
Hovik Manucharyan: scope of the Republic of Armenia and its constitution. The first, I should mention that. it is a definition of Armenian identity. It is one of the biggest components of Armenian identity. So yes, the church…
Asbed Bedrossian: It’s one of the organizations that defines the Armenian identity.
Hovik Manucharyan: it Yeah. Imagine if the Armenian parliament…
Asbed Bedrossian: So it’s the enemies of Armenia, and it’s the enemies of Armenians who want the church muted, removed.
Hovik Manucharyan: Exactly. it.
Asbed Bedrossian: And, you know, I’m willing to bet
Hovik Manucharyan: And.
Asbed Bedrossian: that when this new constitution is drafted, and I don’t believe it’ll ever pass or there’ll be a referendum, them. will contain nothing about the church being the national church. There will be no
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: specially protected mission of the church.
Hovik Manucharyan: All I can say is imagine if the Armenian parliament held meetings about the Catholic Church and discussing all of the improprieties happening in the Catholic Church or any of the other cults and sects operating in Armenia today. but I don’t want to like you know blame of course the Catholics but it is an attack by the state against religion and I want to continue on this geopolitical threat because I truly believe this is a geopolitical plan and which is why I think that the threat is much bigger than you know it might be illegal it might be anti -constitutional but I think it should be taken very seriously and there’s a lot of speculation about because they will install, if they succeed, if their goal materializes, they will install a head of the Armenian church that is compliant with all of their demands, right?
Talk nothing about Artsakh, ixney on the Armenian Genocide not even the rights of Artsakhtsis follow the Pashinyan policy about divorcing the diaspora from Armenia That is all going to be the job description.
Asbed Bedrossian: Remove Mount Ararat from everything.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, that is going to be in the new job description for the Armenian Catholicos.
Hovik Manucharyan: So I don’t know who’s applying for the job, but I have some of my own speculations.
Asbed Bedrossian: You wanna share?
Hovik Manucharyan: Do you have any? Well, of course, what can I do on a podcast that I am a co-host of other
Asbed Bedrossian: Ha ha ha.
Hovik Manucharyan: than sharing? So yes, I like to blabber about this. several names have been floated and I don’t want to say that there’s any fact, but I think there is an audition going on by these foreign intelligence services on who they’re going to install instead of the Catholicos. It’ll probably be someone that people still have heard of. Aram I’s name has been floated.
I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s very curious that over the last five years, he has been very reserved on criticizing Pashinyan. He has sometimes stood up, and other times he’s been silent about what’s going on in Armenia.
Asbed Bedrossian: Can
Hovik Manucharyan: But I want to also talk about Hovnan Derderian.
We cannot ignore the fact that he was the first name on that list of bishops and archbishops who essentially signed up under Pashinyan’s letter or whatever statement about the need to reform this Armenian church. he has wasted no opportunity to take a photo with Armenian officials Pashinyan regime officials visiting Los Angeles whether it was Lilit Makunts or the new ambassador Narek Mkrtchyan and just last month Narek Mkrtchyan was able to succeed in organizing a meeting of the large delegation I wouldn’t say large but maybe sizable and with big names on that list, including people from the Prelacy.
The delegation, I think the biggest name on the delegation was Hovnan Derderian. He was with the Armenian government.
Asbed Bedrossian: The two prelacies, the Eastern prelacies and the Western prelacies,
Hovik Manucharyan: The Armenian government. Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: the Eastern diocese and the Western diocese were all there.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. And it was all organized by the Armenian government. No church, no self-respecting clergy should have accepted that meeting. They went and met with spiritual advisor, Paula White, and they even got a photo up with Trump.
So I definitely think that Hovnan Derderian is part of the audition, but that essentially means that he will have to agree to the conditions for the job, which is to continue this Turkification of Armenia. and that is a thought that breaks my heart that you know because he’s regardless of his betrayal of the Vehapar through various actions I would think that he would be he would have more concern for Armenian identity than if it’s true that he’s the candidate for the position but my biggest worry is that What the heck is our Armenian opposition going to do?
Are we going to allow this fight against the Armenian nation to reach the gates of Etchmiadzin? And as one of the Armenian analysts said, like the Sudanese, essentially, are we going to allow the church to be trampled on like this? And I’m not seeing any signs right now that there is going to be a resistance. The streets should have been full by now.
Asbed Bedrossian: Honestly, I don’t understand what the strategy is. It’s so, they are so passive and so inert, I just don’t get it.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, my patience with
Asbed Bedrossian: So, I have nothing to say.
Hovik Manucharyan: the opposition is full, and unless I see some action, I’m going to be much more critical of them. I think it’s very difficult to criticize the opposition because they’re also being targeted. Their leaders are in jail. Anyone who speaks in Armenia against is immediately jailed or somehow pressured.
Asbed Bedrossian: Jailed.
Hovik Manucharyan: But still, that is what they signed up for. That is what they promised the voters.
Asbed Bedrossian: More was said in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe than was said in the Armenian Parliament. Because on Monday, British MP Edward Leigh warned that the Armenian Apostolic Church is facing what he described as an unprecedented threat from Armenia’s own authorities. I’m going to read, I’m going to try and quote what I’ve read. He said, The Armenian Apostolic Church is the world’s oldest national church, and today it faces an unprecedented threat, not from a foreign power, but from its own government.
The Council of Europe, above all, should be concerned with the freedom of our churches. What we are witnessing is not simply a political disagreement, it’s a calculated attack on religious autonomy. And this is a British MP. accused Pashinyan and the Armenian authorities of erasing the boundaries between the church and state and launching an unprecedented attack against church’s freedom. So,
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. And in response, one of the Civil Contract MPs tried to say something, and basically she was interrupted by the
Asbed Bedrossian: Hripsime Grigoryan went on a stupid rant at the PACE.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. Yeah. She said, well, the brother of the Catholicos is in Russia and is a Russian agent, and therefore the Catholicos should be removed. Something like that. it was very, I mean this is the quality of the people who are now betraying our nation, I mean they could have gotten some smarter people I think to do this job but you know
Asbed Bedrossian: The chairman of the PACE just stopped her cold and said, you know,
Hovik Manucharyan: yeah
Asbed Bedrossian: stick to the topic, lady.
Hovik Manucharyan: yeah
Asbed Bedrossian: Anyway, you know, this was also, there were other international
Hovik Manucharyan: Okay.
Asbed Bedrossian: repercussions. John Eibner, the president of Christian Solidarity International. These guys, we’ve interviewed them before. They’ve had decades of experience in Armenia and Artsakh.
They know the Armenian Apostolic Church. And basically, they slammed this report. They rejected it in full, and basically they called on Pashinyan to drop it and stop persecuting the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: We’ll include the links in the show notes. Okay, Hovik, let’s just kind of move forward.
Asbed Bedrossian: You want to talk about Samvel Karapetyan ’s interview?
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, I mean, it was at least it was a rare interview given by him. I think it was 40 minutes or so to 24 News. I don’t know if it was interesting, though, I have to say, because I mean,
Asbed Bedrossian: The mere fact that he gave an interview was interesting.
Hovik Manucharyan: I mean, Yeah, I mean, but if you give an interview and you give people no hope that you’re going to do something about it, you know, then I, you know, question why he even did it, the timing of the interview. And of course, he talked about, he criticized Pashinyan’s anti-Russian policies. I mean, Strong Armenia is not, in terms of policies, is not pro-Russian. They’re saying, oh, we need multiple guarantors.
We need to, we’re pro-European as well. But of course, he addressed some of the issues such as the speculations and the potential for the Russian base to close. He mentioned that there are 200 cases against people, his party members. None of those have any conclusion.
And it seems like it’s all fits the pattern of Pashinyan basically arresting anyone. anyone they can. And I fully expect that many, if not most of these people will be released.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hovik, there was one point where he accused other opposition members of running interference during the elections. interference during the elections. Do you want to talk a little bit?
Hovik Manucharyan: So this is the interesting part. And I think that, first of all, a few days ago, his nephew, head of the Strong Armenia party, directly blamed Arman Tatoyan for interfering with, hurting the opposition by participating in the election and not winning. Samvel Karapetyan also in his interview indirectly blamed other opposition parties for not joining forces with him or for walking out of those deals because they had negotiations, but some forces didn’t join the coalition that he wanted.
Of course, we know those forces. of the opposition forces, the Prosperous Armenia, think HAK or ANC, even if they had even if they had a minor share in terms of votes all of them played a role and you know what though I have to make a comment about this playing games because first of all I have to say that Arman Tatoyan truly acted irresponsibly and caused great damage to the opposition goes without saying. Pashinyan, I’ve said before, Pashinyan should have thanked Arman Tatoyan personally as a prime reason why he was able to accomplish this feat of not being elected by the majority but still having three-fifths majority in Armenia.
And perhaps same could be said about Prosperous Armenia, but we know that their votes were stolen anyway, They fairly got their five mandates, but they were taken away. But, you know, why the hell are you going with this blame game right now? What is that going to achieve? I don’t get that.
And I worry that if the headline of your public TV appearance is blaming the opposition, the rest of the opposition, for not uniting with you, then you have no other cards to play. Like, that’s my real worry. And also, like, he claims to be a billionaire, he claims to be very powerful. And if he truly was, then why couldn’t he convince these other opposition parties to join forces with him?
I think there is a lot of
Asbed Bedrossian: That’s a real question, Hovik.
Hovik Manucharyan: yeah so the bigger party is him and I claim I put the responsibility for forming a coalition and the failures of the coalition of it not happening on the bigger party, not the smaller ones of course, since we’re talking about mind our viewers and listeners, Strong Armenia campaign, it seems like it was run by amateurs.
I have to say, I tried not to say too much about it during the elections, but whoever thought of the idea of bringing Israeli generals, headlining them at their party congress was completely tone deaf, Israel having helped ethnically cleanse Artsakh. of course the other thing that they failed to do was we knew that Pashinyan was attacking the church so why didn’t you make defense of the church a top campaign issue why didn’t you prepare this fight that is now happening against the church why didn’t you prepare the defense for this fight during your elections their ambiguity about TRIPP is mind-boggling this Turkish intelligence inspired project that Witkoff finally admitted was inspired by Turkish intelligence, why didn’t you speak more, why didn’t you take a more clear line on this issue, playing, you know, sort of both sides instead?
And there are a lot of other minor things. I remember during the campaign, I saw an ad that they ran. They actually approved an ad to be run on Facebook with a fake map of Armenia, fake cities on the map.
Asbed Bedrossian: Mm-hm.
Hovik Manucharyan: It was laughable that this is the type of campaigning that was done by this party. And of course, Civil Contract took advantage of that. They were able to screenshot it before the ad was pulled. And it was really embarrassing.
So my question is, what is Strong Armenia doing now? And how are they going to defend the church? They should either put up or shut up. I’m done.
I mean, this is a time where it all goes, you know, now matters and I’m just waiting for actions.
Asbed Bedrossian: As far as the campaign period goes, I’m a lot more forgiving on them than you are, Hovik. They had to bootstrap themselves in a very short amount of time. Their leaders were in pretrial detention, sometimes in jail, sometimes at home. It was a very difficult time to get anything off the ground and get to the point where you’re a challenger in the elections.
That was not an easy thing. But one thing I’ll agree with you here, this is the time to get it done. No more excuses, no more failures. This is the time to get it done.
The knife is getting to the bone. Hovik, let’s talk about our favorite topics, corruption and persecutions.
Asbed Bedrossian: I don’t have corruption things at the moment, but from the persecution desk, I wanted to mention Vahram Sahakyan.
Asbed Bedrossian: This man is a famous and popular playwright and stage director in Yerevan. He was arrested just in the last couple of days on charges of spreading hate speech because of Facebook posts that he had made back in January of 2026. Well, apparently earlier this month, some nebulous committee, expert committee had said that this actually qualifies as hate speech. And so they went and arrested him.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, another arrest for speech in Armenia.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yep.
Hovik Manucharyan: And we know how all these things go. If you really want to look for hate speech, just examine the Facebook posts of many number of bloggers that are defending Pashinyan. But in any case…
Asbed Bedrossian: It’s amazing that the government actually is spending money to scour Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and trying to find what citizens are actually writing that is against Pashinyan and his government, and they go and they arrest him.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: It’s complete mass surveillance. They’re spending a ton of money on this surveillance and basically arresting people. This is happening in a democracy, theoretically.
Hovik Manucharyan: It is happening everywhere, and there are hundreds of people affected by this.
Asbed Bedrossian: When it gets to court, nothing happens.
Hovik Manucharyan: One of them, it was… Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: They just have a little meeting, and then their pretrial detention gets extended by two months, and a year later, they’re let go for absolutely no reason. The case is dismissed.
Hovik Manucharyan: Just like it happened to Artak Avetisyan, if you remember shortly before the election, the Pashinyan regime arrested this blogger, Artak Avetisyan, who had said something like, hey Pashinyan, if you think that we’re not Armenian, then come to my town and talk to me like that. And that was considered as a hate speech or threat against Pashinyan. And then when they arrested him, he yelled, traitor Nikol. For all of that, I guess he spent part of it at least in jail.
But last week, even the subservient Pashinyan crony judges found this to be very funny, and they essentially acquitted him. But another case study, how if you say something, however mild or however unintimidating, you will just be guaranteed to have a few not fun months in jail at least. And then you can try to fight your way out and prove your innocence hiring lawyers and being at the mercy of judges. And this is introducing a true chilling effect because everyone now has to think twice about what they say on social media.
And I think that this is a way to opposition speech on social media.
Asbed Bedrossian: Right.
Hovik Manucharyan: I do want to mention a few other, very briefly,
Hovik Manucharyan: a few other things that happened last week. So Aregnaz Manukyan from Mother Armenia Party, she was held in solitary confinement, banned even from seeing her own daughter, until enough media commotion was made. So she was finally committed to house arrest, but her liberty is still taken away from her, right? ban on her from any contacts with anyone. So in some ways, it’s even worse because she’s at her house, but she cannot talk to anyone.
Hovik Manucharyan: But in the related case, Andranik Tevanyan, who is also being tried with her, his detention was extended by another three months.
Asbed Bedrossian: Initially, I think they had accused him of espionage,
Hovik Manucharyan: the Yes.
Asbed Bedrossian: and they dropped that case because it was so outlandish and ridiculous.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: So I’m not entirely sure exactly what he is arrested for.
Hovik Manucharyan: Exactly.
Asbed Bedrossian: But while they think that up, the man is in jail.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, and last week also, Arthur Avanesyan, the famous Gandzaketsi, he was recorded. I mean, the fact that everyone is being recorded now, it should be taken for granted, right? So they found a recording of him. he said that he was talking to people from Martakert, and they’re saying, why should we vote for you? We have no house.
We have no home. If you vote for us, you’ll have a home. And they took that, they interpreted that as an offer of bribes. Like, you know, we’ll give you a home for one vote.
And he was in jail all this time for two months now, I guess. He’s in jail. now his or maybe under house arrest I forget but now his house arrest also has been loosened so the conditions have been changed but he still can’t leave the country he still can’t you know there are probably other administrative measures so you know it seems like every week we have new people being arrested and more news about people being continued to be held in jail It needs to be talked about.
Hovik Manucharyan: I do want to mention one more topic. I know we’re over time. But last week, a curious thing happened. Basically, without going into too much details, Emmanuel Macron of France was able to convince the European Union to lift sanctions on an Uzbek-Russian billionaire, Alisher Usmanov. coincidentally on the same day Ilham Aliyev pardoned Martin Ryan, a French citizen who was serving jail sentence in Azerbaijan for spying and you couldn’t believe the warm and cushy messages
Asbed Bedrossian: Heh heh heh.
Hovik Manucharyan: coming from the French foreign ministry they heralded the start of normalization process in French and Azerbaijani relations And of course, both the French and Azerbaijanis denied any direct blackmail or explicit quid pro quo in this deal. Sure, Macron and Aliyev, we believe you. But I just have one question. You know, if Macron really wanted to, if he’s such a great friend of the Armenians, could he also not secure the release of at least some of the Armenian hostages currently in Baku, like Ruben Vardanyan? didn’t participate in any fighting directly.
Yes, he was state minister for a few months, but that to me, that shows the real priorities of Europe and the French leader. As they say, Armenians love someone with their ears, while and cold geopolitics is taking place all around us and we’re like boiling frogs. So that’s all the good news for this week.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay, Hovik. Yep, enough good news. So, that’s all for this week. And that was our Week in Review.
We recorded it on September 29. Once again, we started it on September 29, and we’re ending it on September 30, working over midnight. Folks, thank you for listening. We are always thankful that you trust us to bring you good news. news about Armenia and the region, but you can also support us financially.
So go to podcasts.groong.org slash donate and help us out. And if that’s not for you, please help us, like and share and comment on our shows. That will help us enough. I’m Asbed Bedrossian.
Hovik Manucharyan: And I’m Hovik Manucharyan.
Asbed Bedrossian: We’ll talk to you next week.
Hovik Manucharyan: Have a great week. Bye-bye.