Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hello everyone, this is Groong’s Week in Review for November 8, 2026.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hello, Hovik, how’s it going?
Hovik Manucharyan: Hey Asbed, going good, how are you?
Asbed Bedrossian: I’m doing okay. Doing okay.
Asbed Bedrossian: Here in the U.S. we had some elections. And you know how fun it is when you have elections, right?
Hovik Manucharyan: Yes, yes. Tell us all about it.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay, look, we talked on this show about regime change a number of months ago. Back in March, really, when we were talking with Scott Horton, we actually said that the Iran war was going to lead to regime change, but not in the way that Trump and a lot of people actually thought it was going to be, but rather in the U.S. We actually said this on our show. Well, here we are.
This is as close to regime change as you come, because the 2026 midterm elections wrapped up with a major shift across the U.S. Congress. The Democrats swept into power controlling both the House and the Senate and it was a 42 seat swing in the House and a seven seat swing in the Senate. And that is not small stuff.
That is not like squeaking into power. It’s basically blowing the doors off from, you know, modern times in the United States. And unlike a few years ago, when the Democrats basically had a one person majority in the Senate and Joe Manchin was able to hold up all of Biden’s programs because he didn’t like this or he was basically a Southern conservative. conservative. This time it’s going to take four derelict Democrats before things get bogged down.
So I really think that there is a real power swing going on. Also, notably, we have our first Muslim American senator from Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. He was elected handily despite all of the bigotry and hate that he got from the White House. I don’t know if you recall, but Trump was calling him Mohammed, claiming that his name was Mohammed.
And when he got elected, he basically said to the White House, well, if you can’t say my name, just call me Senator. I enjoyed that one.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah,
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, last week we talked with Aram Hamparian.
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, I mean…
Asbed Bedrossian: Give us a rundown of just a couple of the top two or three people who made it in, did not make it in. What happened there?
Hovik Manucharyan: So I don’t know how much we can go into this given our time,
Hovik Manucharyan: but speaking of Abdul El-Sayed, you know, I honestly, I remain cautious about any politician promises nowadays. But, for instance, on the issue of Armenians, he has previously spoken against the Washington administration giving a blank check to Azerbaijan. This is regarding Section 907 and, you know, military support. And from that perspective, I think it’s a welcome development. a whole list of A-list and F-list of people I think it was two episodes ago with
Asbed Bedrossian: I think it was 598.
Hovik Manucharyan: and
Asbed Bedrossian: Yes.
Hovik Manucharyan: yeah and El-Sayed was endorsed by the ANCA and I’m happy that he won in terms of other endorsements Sununu lost to Pappas, so that’s also a welcome development. He was essentially directly profiting off of genocide in Artsakh by investing in Anglo Asian Mining.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hovik, can I quickly remind, when you said Anglo Asian Mining, these guys are investing in some of those mines that the so-called eco-activists from the Azerbaijani Secret Service were trying to shut down, saying that it’s a major, major environmental disaster going on.
Hovik Manucharyan: Environmental problem.
Asbed Bedrossian: So, you know, they were demonstrating on the border between Shushi and down in
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Stepanakert and stuff like that. And in reality, Anglo Asian Mining, John Sununu, is invested in that. Millions, five to ten million dollars worth of his money is in that.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. And the bad news is that Cuellar from Texas got re-elected. And yeah, we have to deal with him.
Asbed Bedrossian: Still have to deal with them.
Hovik Manucharyan: And I think that to be a thorn in his side.
Asbed Bedrossian: say? You know, sitting here in the U.S.
Hovik Manucharyan: like you have some analysis on this?
Asbed Bedrossian: Another analysis. I just want to recap a little bit because, you know,
Asbed Bedrossian: both of us are interested in what this means for foreign policy. What does this shift mean for foreign policy? Generally, I think we should expect stricter congressional oversight regarding most of the wars that the U.S. just doesn’t seem to be able to get out of. We were promised by Trump that these forever wars are a thing of history.
He didn’t want any of them, but, you know, we’re still involved around the world with these problems. honest, you and I both know these things are not going to stop. But funding them is going to be a different process with the Dem-controlled Congress. I think that we are going towards a greater level of scrutiny and debate simply because the White House is of another party. So Congress is going to try to check them, unlike the last couple of years when everybody’s been on the same side and whatever Trump wants to do, it’s a blank check for him.
But of course, you know, if we want to talk about Ukraine and that very statement about checks and balances and everything. Well, the Democrats are already talking about a $15 billion package of aid to Ukraine, but they just want greater oversight differentiation between structural aid versus direct military assistance. Is that really different from what we’ve seen? I don’t know.
I guess more people want to have their fingers in the pot and talk about it. there are a couple of And Trump’s transactional style has been one of, you know, meddling and generally trying to push sort of the loser, the military loser, in this case, Ukraine, towards rapid resolutions, trying to go towards territorial concessions in exchange for signing a peace agreement and stuff like that, freezing the conflict, slowing down direct aid to force them to do that. But now I think we can see that that hasn’t agreed with Europe. interested in basically territorial integrity.
They consider that this whole issue between Ukraine and Russia has been an affront on all of Europe, and it’s an existential threat to Europe if Ukraine doesn’t win or at least stand its ground. So it seems to me that Congress might be a little more aligned with our European allies. What’s your thought on that?
Hovik Manucharyan: I don’t know. Well, first of all, so many different things I don’t agree with.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay.
Hovik Manucharyan: Europeans and allies, number one. I think number two is…
Asbed Bedrossian: Are you speaking from Armenia’s perspective or the U.S. perspective?
Hovik Manucharyan: No, I think even the U.S. perspective, I think despite, I mean, Trump represents expression of the natural state of things where interests don’t align. And the only way they align is if you’re part of a state that is interested in continuing all these wars and continuing global supremacy. All I heard from Asbed, from your end is that the wars will continue. And I agree with that.
Trump had an opportunity to stop the Ukraine war , at least. He didn’t do that. Trump, in fact, started a new war on Iran. So that is the reason why lost these elections, not because of any ideology or anything like that.
The U.S. people are tired of war. But unfortunately, with the Democrats coming back,
Asbed Bedrossian: Oh, we’re paying for it.
Hovik Manucharyan: foresee that the Democrats will continue this war, not stop it. I And sorry for being pessimistic on this, but I’m going to, given, like, I don’t believe, like, that Chuck Schumer is going to sort of stop any of the aid to Israel. I don’t believe that all of these Democrats who, you know, who were responsible when the war in Ukraine began are now suddenly going to switch tack, despite their voters directly telling them that this is not the right idea. so yeah count me in the pessimists’ camp if that’s what that means
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, I think that’s the second area that I want to talk about. That’s the aid to Israel, Gaza, West Bank, this horror that’s going on over there. Because when it comes to that, these Democratic majorities in Congress represent a notable shift in the voter base that swept them into power. Voters expect Democratic leadership in both the House and the Senate to push for stricter conditions on arms transfer to Israel.
And there are some key people like al
Hovik Manucharyan: the voters…
Asbed Bedrossian: -Sayed. You know, these people have made certain agreements that they don’t want offensive munitions to go to Israel because they’ve been using it in high-density urban areas, killing indiscriminately. They say, okay, if we’re going to be on the side of Israel, let’s be there defensively. And that’s what, you know, let’s give them the Iron Dome and what have you.
But why do we give them all these missiles that are raining on Gaza? we’re seeing is that the discussion is becoming a little more granular about these things. I don’t believe that aid is going to stop to Israel, but I think that there’s going to be a little more scrutiny on these things. But can I make your point for you about this Chuck Schumer business? To be fair, these people have as much of a history funding Israel war crimes as Republicans do.
Let’s remember Kamala Harris, only what, a few years ago, she pointedly refused to rein in Netanyahu’s genocide. She definitely said that basically we’re not going to do anything about it. And that’s a time two years ago when Israel was just causing havoc in Gaza. But the voters came through and basically said, well, okay, well, you’re going to pay for that.
And she didn’t win. And Michigan was one of the key places that contributed to her defeat. And then the guy who’s very likely to become the Speaker of the House, Hakeem Jeffries. This guy is considered to be in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies.
I don’t expect him to be a check and balances on sending aid on Israel.
Hovik Manucharyan: So the genocide will continue.
Asbed Bedrossian: But now there’s, yeah, I sure hope it’ll slow down or something. Now, there’s already a change.org petition that has gathered over a million petition signatures in just one or two days that says basically the petition says to give Congress people more representative of voter priorities a chance to become speaker instead of just basically saying, oh, Hakeem Jeffries is going to be the speaker. So we’ll put the link to that change.org thing in the show notes. So if you are interested, go check out the show notes, podcasts.groong.org slash episode number.
Click on the links and you’ll find that. You know, the pessimist in me is kind of like you. Chances are that we’re going to go back to the preferred gridlock strategy of a two -state solution, multilateral ceasefires, expanded humanitarian aid corridors, all these buzzwords floating around. Basically, this allows Israel to settle Palestinian lands over decades, you know, instead of this horrible genocide that’s going on.
So, it’s option one versus option two kind of a thing. Do you want to talk a little bit about their election over there?
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, unfortunately, I I think the only thing that I would say is that
Hovik Manucharyan: no matter what party in Israel wins or obtains a higher amount of the mandates in the elections, we know that they are all heavily anti-Palestinian and would continue So it seems now we have Gadi Eisenkot. He has been given the mandate to form government. I think most of the analysis I’ve seen is that they’ll have a very tough time forming a coalition government and getting the majority of the mandates needed to form a coalition government. And we might have a few more elections.
But regardless of who is in power, whether it’s Netanyahu or Eisenkot, for me, it’s absolutely no difference because it seems like these leaders, believe Eisenkot lost his own son.
Asbed Bedrossian: And two nephews, I heard. Yeah, I read that.
Hovik Manucharyan: So, you know, unfortunately, the state of the Israeli population is that they are in support still, whether it’s Eisenkot or Netanyahu. the genocide in Gaza
Asbed Bedrossian: just wanted to say that only compared to Netanyahu is Eisenkot a moderate. He also does not support a two-state solution. He doesn’t believe in a Palestinian state one way or the other.
Hovik Manucharyan: How is that being more moderate?
Asbed Bedrossian: I’m not entirely sure what they believe as far as a people’s self -determination or statehood. So I don’t know.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah. What kind of an effect do you think that this shift in the U.S.
Asbed Bedrossian: will have the war on Iran?
Hovik Manucharyan: have no predictions. I think it will continue the same way, to be honest.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hmm. So you don’t think that there’s going to be any effect? Because everything I read says that the Democrats want to put budget caps on the spending that America is doing. I mean, supposedly we’ve spent about $39 billion so far.
And of course, Trump basically said that’s chump change. That’s a drop in the bucket. it, but the Democrats want to put a stop or a cap on how much we spend and find the diplomatic exit strategy.
Hovik Manucharyan: I’ll believe it when I see it. Let me just put it that way.
Asbed Bedrossian: So how do you see that Iran and Russia are going to view the fact that we have a lame duck president in the United States? Does it matter for them?
Hovik Manucharyan: is not the aggressor United States is the aggressor, and Israel are the aggressors, and if the goals that started this war by the United States and Israel remain, which is complete subjugation of Iran, complete regime change, and the inability of Iran to even defend itself in the near future or in the long term, If that is the goal that has been stated over and over, and not just by Republicans, then I don’t see how Iran’s actions would change anything. So I think that Iran has perceived properly that this war is not going to stop. And I think they’re ready for the protracted outcome.
But in terms of Russia as well, Putin had would say, ill begotten trust in Trump and Trump being able to stop the war machine. but now that he’s completely sort of been neutered in Congress, I think he’s not going to be able to deliver on any deals that he made with Putin, even if he did that. And it was questionable if he could do that even when the Republicans controlled both houses.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, yeah. I’ve actually read that they are thinking that this is going to be a lame duck situation starting in January, and they want to stop talking to these special envoys whose power only emanates from Trump himself because they don’t feel like Trump is going to have any real power. These Witkoffs and the Kushners that he keeps sending, they’re not even associated officially with the State Department. And so articles, analysis that I’ve read basically says we should stop talking to these people.
We should insist on written things from the State Department because nothing else is really believable. And so I really don’t think that anything is going to come from the State Department. And so nothing is going to happen for the next two years. It’ll be interesting to see.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: One final area is TRIPP, and it seems like right now there’s no effect on TRIPP it’s kind of rolling along. Armenia and Azerbaijan and the U.S. announced the trilateral establishment of some kind of a group a working group a couple of days ago and the plan is to advance the infrastructure. One interesting thing that I saw is that a month ago there were Armenian and Azerbaijani engineering teams that were scoping out Syunik.
Hovik Manucharyan: Hmm.
Asbed Bedrossian: And this is specifically for the easements for energy and railroad things. Now, I know that we had unofficially read, we’d seen Azerbaijani teams in Syunik back in February, but this one actually comes from the government that they were here about a month ago when they were doing these things. It’s kind of funny that until events are forced, we don’t hear anything from the government, from the Armenian government telling us that these things are going on.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Anyway, so it looks like the project is, at the moment, on the rails, let’s say.
Hovik Manucharyan: I mean, I think that the outcome of TRIPP is closely tied to the Iran war and how strong Iran will be to resist any encroachment on its borders . So I still don’t think it’s a done deal.
Asbed Bedrossian: Did you read some of the statements that came from Ali Akbar Velayati?
Hovik Manucharyan: Of course, we talked about it with Dziunik Aghajanian,
Asbed Bedrossian: Those were kind of interesting.
Hovik Manucharyan: don’t know if there’s anything more to discuss, but it was very critical of the Pashinyan regime, very antagonistic to TRIPP itself.
Asbed Bedrossian: And Pashinyan, personally.
Hovik Manucharyan: So, and Pashinyan, yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, so that’s, I
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: thought that was very interesting. Okay, moving on, and coming to the domestic scene in Yerevan,
Asbed Bedrossian: there are some dramatic developments taking place in Armenia as well. A week after Pashinyan promised more pressure against the opposition, actually he used very kind terms, he said he was hoping to convince the opposition. The Pashinyan regime launched a new criminal case against Samvel Karapetyan. On November 4, the authorities marched into Karapetyan’s home, where he was already serving his pretrial detention under house arrest, and they arrested him again.
They arrested the arrested man. And at the same time, they also searched the home of his nephew, Narek Karapetyan, who is the leader of the Strong Armenia party in the parliament. the allegations are that somehow Samvel Karapetyan defrauded Electric Networks of Armenia.
This is a company he owns so I’m not entirely sure how it works that the man defrauded himself but those are the charges and chances are that they’re going to be dropped at some point but this is like all these frivolous lawsuits that pashinyan keeps throwing us out aside anyway following this arrest and at the same time the same day delegation leaders representing 13 distinct political factions gathered at Samvel Karapetyan’s home in Yerevan.
They set aside their procedural and ideological disagreements and they signed a historic joint declaration to form a coalition, and so far we’re calling this the opposition consolidation for lack of a better word. There was another word they used, like a builder kind of an organization. I’m not entirely sure what it’s going to be called, but I’m calling it the opposition consolidation for now. So, Hovik, two questions for you here.
First of all, kind of a rhetorical question. What does the timing of the new charges against Samvel Karapetyan mean, and what the hell is it? and what the hell is it? I think we kind of know the answer. But more importantly, we want to understand a little bit more, what have these forces agreed to do together?
And is this a common position? You know, electoral alliance, a protest movement, a preparation for street action? What’s going on?
Hovik Manucharyan: So on the timing, obviously, I think Pashinyan, you know, being encouraged by any lack of, let’s say, criticism from the West and from his puppet masters in the West is continuing pressure. and with Aliyev , they’re going to increase pressure on the one side, so that they hopefully, I mean, that’s the strategy of Pashinyan, to increase pressure so much, maybe he’ll be able to get five or six people from the opposition to flip and allow for the vote on Aliyev’s constitution to go to a referendum. It doesn’t seem like the opposition is going to play ball, and that’s why I think these things happen.
So I think the previous two weeks were used as a period for negotiations, saying, you know, I’m going to do all these things, all these bad things to you, you better sort of negotiate with me. And the opposition is putting its foot down, and especially the opposition, meaning Samvel Karapetyan, Robert Kocharyan, and they are, I think, signaling that they’re willing to risk oppression. I feel that maybe even Narek Karapetyan and Levon Kocharyan may be targeted and arrested soon, or more people from the Kocharyan family.
I think that’s going to happen. only thing they can do, the only job they have now is to not fold and to ensure that they don’t give those five or six votes for the to go to a vote. Because if it goes to a vote, know how this regime falsifies elections. If they accuse the previous regimes in Armenia of falsifying elections, they do it 10 times worse. We saw it in the June elections, and we saw it in the recent municipal elections where he arrested all the opposition and prevented them from campaigning.
Asbed Bedrossian: Mm
Hovik Manucharyan: I welcome the consolidation of the opposition.
Hovik Manucharyan: I think they had a statement where they laid down their sort of, you know, pillars on which they are going to be united. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about that?
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, so they had talked about four common themes for all 13 members who are participating. Rejecting the Aliyev-imposed constitution, complete refusal to vote for or allow a referendum on a new constitutional text demanded by Baku as a precondition for a peace treaty. And then they don’t want any kind of a peace agreement that is based on unilateral concessions, rejecting all the territorial losses, demarcation compromises or security downgrades, protecting the national identity and the church.
They say, stand fast, defending national heritage, history, and the Armenian Apostolic Church against state-driven attacks and nationalization schemes, including the takeover of Electric Networks of Armenia, of course. And then, finally, the restoration of rights and democratic freedoms, pushing back against state coercion, politically motivated detentions and law enforcement abuses, selective law enforcement, and so on. So these are, it’s a very common sense, right? Anybody would say you guys are stating the obvious here, but that’s not how it works in Armenia.
And when you were talking about falsified elections, Hovik, we have already seen, the government has proven that they’re going to go to any step to falsify elections. We’ve seen the CEC chair, Vahagn Hovakimyan, selectively invalidate votes in certain precincts prevent Prosperous Armenia from entering the parliament. It’s really important to mention these things.
Hovik Manucharyan: And he was, and he was, yeah, yeah, and he was a former, and he was a member of Civil Contract just before he got appointed to the CEC,
Asbed Bedrossian: That’s right. These people suddenly go to sleep as Civil Contract members and they wake up
Hovik Manucharyan: and he’s been a longtime crony of Pashinyan.
Asbed Bedrossian: completely impartial people.
Hovik Manucharyan: But what if it goes to the Constitutional Court? We have a new head of the Constitutional Court who also used to be a Civil
Asbed Bedrossian: We’re going to talk about that in just
Hovik Manucharyan: contract member.
Asbed Bedrossian: a moment. Or if you want, let’s talk about that right now.
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, I mean, yeah, the Constitutional Court has now been fully,
Asbed Bedrossian: Go for it.
Hovik Manucharyan: fully stacked with supporters, supporters of Civil Contract.
Asbed Bedrossian: Co-opted.
Hovik Manucharyan: That has been unprecedented in the history of Armenia. Even in the worst days of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Robert Kocharyan, or Serzh Sargsyan, there was some kind of a balance where some members of the Constitutional Court were appointed during the time of the previous leaders. Now, all the members of the Constitutional Court are appointed by Civil Contract, And at the same time, the head of the Constitutional Court, Vladimir Vardanyan, is one of the strongest cronies for Pashinyan. He used to be in the parliament.
Then they shipped him off to the Constitutional Court, and now he’s going to be heading the Constitutional Court. the court. So you can expect rubber stamping essentially of any pro-Pashinyan ruling. So there will be no challenge at all in the Constitutional Court. And of course all the other institutions are law enforcement you know, it’s fully controlled by Pashinyan.
So if you expect to have free and fair elections in this environment, then I’ve
Asbed Bedrossian: In case some of our U.S. listeners don’t understand what this whole thing is and they think that it’s just judicial hoo-ha, remember when Mitch McConnell held up the final appointment for the Supreme Court by Obama and everything went to hell in the United States because of one appointment out of the nine judges? Here we have, over the last few years, over the tenure of the term of one prime minister, Pashinyan, has basically gotten rid of the entire court and appointed his own people. So that’s what’s going on. So if you think that there’s democracy in this country, try to make the point where there’s absolutely no judicial independence.
It’s the checks and balances that keep a democracy together, and there’s none of that right now.
Hovik Manucharyan: So to come back to the opposition, I’m still, unclear how they to continue their strategy long term. Because assuming that they won’t fold and they won’t give their votes to Pashinyan to have this constitutional referendum, he has all the power to trigger new elections. And in these new elections, he’s going to ban their parties. he’s going to ban Strong Armenia, and he’s going to be banning the ARF, and he will have new elections without those opposition parties. And
Asbed Bedrossian: then he’s going to be surprised when the election results come in that there’s no
Hovik Manucharyan: is…
Asbed Bedrossian: real opposition in Armenia.
Hovik Manucharyan: He’s going to say, well, you know, yeah, it’s really bad I got 99% of the vote. There’s no opposition in Armenia.
Asbed Bedrossian: It looks terrible to Europe.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Anyway, sorry.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, so that’s where I think that the only tools left in the tool bag are a popular street movement. And I know there has been a lot of discussion about the timing of it, but it seems like the time is running out when the opposition can… it. But it’s going to be unstable times coming in the near future in Armenia.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, well, Hovik, I want you to talk a little bit about two important events that
Asbed Bedrossian: are coming up between Yerevan and Moscow that will affect the relations and also the economy of Armenia.
Hovik Manucharyan: There is the November 11 CSTO summit that’s going to be in Moscow. And also in December there’s going to be a Eurasian Economic Union summit in St. Petersburg. And I think in both of these summits Armenia is going to be at the center of the discussions.
So to rewind a little bit, after the, Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kyrgyzstan, and Pashinyan separately said that they would soon meet, and in some cases they said very soon,
Asbed Bedrossian: Like next week.
Hovik Manucharyan: the implication was it was going to be in a matter of days or weeks, they’re going to meet and discuss the future of Armenia and Russia relations. Then we heard over the coming weeks, we heard conciliatory announcements from Armenia for one, about the Russian Railways. railways out of Armenia. Now they’re saying, well, let them do more investments and maybe we can consider allowing them to stay. And the other one, which was a big surprise, was Armenia essentially shifted publicly, shifted its stance on the future of Armenia’s nuclear power.
They basically switched from American small modular reactors to saying that they’re going to accept the Russian proposal, Rosatom proposal, to have a one gigawatt nuclear power plant, the VVER kind that currently Russia is building up. And none of these meetings have happened, and recent statements from Armenian officials appear to also now have completely flipped again. Pashinyan last week said that Armenia may formally apply for EU membership in 2027, that’s three months from now, or 2028.
And we have to remind people that Russia essentially sees EU membership incompatible with the Eurasian Economic Union, so you have to be in one or the other. Meanwhile, Alen Simonyan again added fuel to the fire, I think a few days ago. He’s now the secretary of the National Security Council, and he essentially again blamed Russia for failing to stop the 2020 war. I mean, out of the blue, we thought these discussions were sort of tired, like being a dead horse, but he’s back blaming Russians for a war they started.
What are your thoughts on all this flip-flopping, Asbed?
Asbed Bedrossian: Hovik, I want to add one more thing that Alen Simonyan was saying, was that if Turkey wanted to attack, there was not a thing that Armenia could do about it. So, essentially saying, let’s not worry about it, because there’s nothing we, I mean, the Secretary of the National Security Council is saying, there’s nothing I can do about the national security of the country. Why do we need him?
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, one thing, I mean, Turkey is not the only country who
Asbed Bedrossian: Hahahaha
Hovik Manucharyan: can cause harm. And a lot of Armenians think of Russia as a, you know, friend. And I think that is true. But it’s a sleeping bear for a reason.
And if you poke it, so yes, I agree, we should not make an attack by a potentially humongous humongously overwhelming military power more likely that includes not just Turkey, both Russia so if Turkey, if you don’t want Turkey to attack you don’t antagonize it like Armenia did in 2020 if you don’t want Russia to attack you don’t do anything to threaten its interests in the region like Armenia is doing right now
Asbed Bedrossian: I just feel like they’re completely clued out.
Hovik Manucharyan: you know.
Asbed Bedrossian: You balance Turkey with Russia, or all of these big countries, you know, in the three plus three.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yes.
Asbed Bedrossian: We have Iran, Turkey, and Russia. These three huge powers, these empires previously, have always balanced each other out. There’s no other way that Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan can continue existing unless these guys are balanced. And here we have a foreign policy that completely antagonizes two of them, Iran and Russia.
They’re both very pissed off, and they both used to be our allies.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: So it’s a foreign policy that, as far as I’m concerned, has failed. And why all the flip-flopping? I couldn’t tell you. But the thing is that when Pashinyan is in Yerevan, eventually starts seeing that there are important issues for which there’s no alternative to Russia.
And then he goes to Europe, to Brussels, and comes back and starts making very pointed statements at them.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: So you can see where he’s getting his orders and who butters his bread, because all of the billion dollars a year that Armenia is borrowing and adding on the national pretty much.
Hovik Manucharyan: Exactly. I think for posterity, we should address these comments because every time they go unaddressed, one more poor, unfortunate soul falls prey to this propaganda. Why is the Pashinyan regime blaming the Russians again for the 2020 war? And yes, granted, I think everyone agrees that maybe Russia could have done more to prevent it, but was it obligated to do so?
And did Russia really fail to stop the 2020 war?
Asbed Bedrossian: They tried to stop with three proposals for a ceasefire, I believe three times. I can’t remember all the dates anymore without going back to my research. So it was entirely Russia that was able to put a stop to the thing. Could they have done more?
Absolutely, they could have done more. I don’t want to go into this because we will go on for hours and hours. I do think that Russia could have done more. But Armenia had a leader that was spitting in their face.
Hovik Manucharyan: But yeah, I mean…
Asbed Bedrossian: And while they just didn’t want to particularly help Pashinyan, I think the Armenian nation paid for it. Thank you.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that’s not saying, you know, could Elon Musk do more to make me a billionaire? Of course he can. You know, he can give me a billion dollars right now.
Elon Musk, please.
Asbed Bedrossian: Hmm.
Hovik Manucharyan: But is he obligated to jeopardize his relations, especially when he’s getting nothing from that? So the same with Armenia. And the fact is, if you’re talking about the 2020 war after it started, Russia did make proposals to stop it earlier, the October 19th to 20th proposal. It’s a highly publicized proposal that Pashinyan himself acknowledged existed.
And in this proposal, according to this proposal, Armenians would keep Shushi. they would have to allow resettlement of Shushi by Azeris. Now, can argue, okay, well, anyway, that’s bad, but comparing to what we have today, that’s paradise, honestly. But even before that, I mean, how did this war start to begin with? You know,
Asbed Bedrossian: It seems like everybody knew that the war was going to start except Pashinyan from
Hovik Manucharyan: Ashotyan Yeah, I mean, he, not only did he, so first of all,
Asbed Bedrossian: the level of preparation he had for the war.
Hovik Manucharyan: he was pretty uniquely positioned as an Armenian leader coming on top of a so-called revolution, which was a coup, with like 100% approval rating to finally accept the Lavrov plan by Russia, which would have, yes, you would have ceded some territories, and I don’t know if I would be happy at the time if you did that, but If he’s saying that today he’s making sacrifices which completely compromise Armenia’s territorial integrity and Armenia’s sovereignty, then he could have made a much smaller sacrifice back then, to hand over five of the surrounding territories while keeping Kelbajar and Lachin for the indefinite future, and to freeze this conflict, the Artsakh conflict, forever. because it was going to be internationally guaranteed, and it was going to tie know, the ceding of those two, Lachin and Kelbajar, to the final status of Artsakh and a referendum.
Pashinyan didn’t do that. In fact, he accelerated the war. He, you know, all his policies, yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, there were so many political and diplomatic gaffes.
Hovik Manucharyan: he could have done everything to prevent the war from starting. He could have done everything to have a much better outcome for Armenia. They didn’t, and now they’re blaming Russia for it. So anyway, I have to say that.
Asbed Bedrossian: On this show, I’ve said in the past, a long time ago, this was an engineered defeat, and I stand by that, even though today I don’t think we have the time to discuss the whole thing.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: Although some of our listeners have asked for a full discussion of this chapter in history, and at some point we’re probably going to have to consider it, except both of us are too close to this right now to objectively look at every
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, last September, we had an episode on the 2020
Asbed Bedrossian: detail. Mm-hmm.
Hovik Manucharyan: war. So feel free to go back and watch that. I mean, I think we tried to do that there. But yeah, I mean, this will be something that will be debated or, you know, the history on this is still being written.
But to say that Russia enticed Pashinyan to start a war with Azerbaijan and then
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, yeah, yeah.
Hovik Manucharyan: withheld the stopping of the war that Pashinyan started is just ridiculous. So going back to Russian-Armenian relations today. we mentioned what’s happening with Armenia’s membership in the CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union and while Armenians can you know I think Pashinyan once again said that he doesn’t care what happens to Armenia’s membership with the CSTO they can kick us out if they want I think the membership in the Eurasian Economic Union is really important and there is some tendency for Russia to tie both of them together.
So if Armenia makes too many moves, like if Armenia publicly withdraws from the CSTO, which would be a huge PR blow to Russia, then that’s another drop in the bucket of antagonism towards Russia. But last, I think it was two weeks ago, the Eurasian Economic Union, I think several member states of it, put a report together about the consequences of Armenia’s potential suspension. And they also, I think, discussed the mechanism of doing that. But I think it’s less important.
I think it’s important to talk about what it would mean for Armenia to lose the privileges of being a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, right? Whether it does it by
Asbed Bedrossian: So, Hovik, can I clarify one thing really fast?
Hovik Manucharyan: yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: You were saying that membership in Eurasian Economic Union is incompatible with membership in the EU, which is true at present under the current conditions, political winds and everything, but it’s not entirely Russia that’s just saying it on their side. The EU is saying it on the other side as well, that you can’t be part of the EU as long as you are in the Eurasian Economic Union.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: So it’s not like there’s a one-sided, you’re either with us or you’re with the enemy. It’s the other side saying the absolute same thing as well.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: But that’s because right now they are mortal enemies.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yes, and given the political winds, I think that nothing is changing in that.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, they’re at war with each other.
Hovik Manucharyan: And it’s important to say that there are currently no legal mechanisms for the EAEU to kick out a member, but they are talking about suspending Armenia’s membership, and even that is problematic. But there are various different official and unofficial ways that effectively this could de facto happen. But what are the consequences if Armenia loses its benefits as part of its EAEU membership?
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, outside of the fact that Armenia’s exports are something like 40% of the exports are going to Russia, that’s going to be a huge drop-off if Russia closes its markets. The other thing is that it’s now clear that Russia considers the fact that there is cheap gas to Armenia, basically economic aid, and they’re saying this is a benefit of being a member of the Eurasian Economic Union. So if you leave this, your gas is going to go essentially something between doubling and tripling, I think, or something like that.
It’s going to go, Armenians are paying, well, not Armenians, Armenia is currently paying something on the order of about $177 per thousand cubic meters of gas.
Hovik Manucharyan: 100,000.
Asbed Bedrossian: And then that’s going to go to something like $670.
Hovik Manucharyan: 100,000.
Asbed Bedrossian: So it’s a tripling of the price. The funny thing that I remember is that initially when this discussion was being had, Mher Grigoryan, who is taking care of a lot of these things, was basically saying that it would be catastrophic for Armenia to have this something like 70% drop off in trade and the economic union.
Hovik Manucharyan: Use the…
Asbed Bedrossian: But recently, I think, after a little bit of pressure from his boss,
Hovik Manucharyan: Do you use the words apocalyptic? Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: that’s right, a little pressure from his boss, a little nudge, it’s gone a hundredfold down or something like that.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: So there will be no effect on exiting the Eurasian Economic Union.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. I mean… Pashinyan publicly said that those who talk about apocalyptic scenarios for Armenia, I mean, that’s his own central bank head, he said they don’t know what they’re saying.
Asbed Bedrossian: He managed to convince his cabinet members.
Hovik Manucharyan: And, yeah. It kind of reminds me of the time when the head of his legal department said, yeah, you know, this international arbitration court that ruled against us, we’re going to try to abide by that ruling. And then Pashinyan fired him.
Asbed Bedrossian: That
Hovik Manucharyan: But look, granted, this report is from the Eurasian Economic Union itself, but it predicts Armenia’s GDP falling by 16%, 15.6%. It predicts Armenia’s exports markets dropping by 65.8%. It predicts a rise in the gas 69%. And that’s for households.
I mean, I think that the cost for business will be even more. The reduced income from abroad. We talked about the hundreds of thousands or millions of Armenian workers who keep going to Russia every summer to work and bring back the money. It’s going to trigger all these economic consequences that apparently the Pashinyan regime is sort of willing to risk all for joining the EU.
So did he receive some kind of guarantees from Brussels that the EU is going to prop up Armenia for however many years it takes until Armenia essentially joins the EU? any indication of that. In fact, last week…
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, Hovik, let me take that up for one second. First of all, they gave something on the order of 50-60 million dollars so that they could float the Armenian economy for about six weeks or something. But recently, I think they have made some legislative efforts to take off the tariffs from Armenian products so that Armenian products can reach EU countries without tariffs. The funny thing is that, for example, they have made exceptions for products that Armenia doesn’t really export.
Do you remember we talked about this on one show, the
Hovik Manucharyan: The cucumber paradox,
Asbed Bedrossian: cucumber conundrum, where they allowed Armenia to export,
Hovik Manucharyan: yes.
Asbed Bedrossian: speaking off the top of my head, about 6,000 tons of cucumbers to the EU without tariffs. Armenia doesn’t produce that much.
Hovik Manucharyan: Asbed, that entire tariff package was worth 3 million euros. We know that’s not going to do anything for the hit that Armenia is going to take.
Asbed Bedrossian: So, and I’m sorry, we’re
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, okay, so what is Pashinyan staking his support on? I mean, that’s the question that I want to get to. And I think that in reality, what is going to happen is that I think one of the, for instance, Armenia is going to have a huge energy deficit because 30% of Armenia’s electrical power is even powered by gas, natural gas. If natural gas gets cut off or gets much more expensive, it’s going to have a cascading cost on other forms of energy.
So this is why we’ve been hearing talk, I think, from Azerbaijan that, hey, Azerbaijan has surplus energy. We have, you know, I think they even mentioned they have surplus of 800 billion gigawatts of energy from the Caspian region, green energy. And that really sounds great to European ears, right? We have all this green energy.
So Azerbaijan is pushing Europe to fund its energy proposals. And that may be one of the things that happens where Europe provides not millions, but billions of dollars to Azerbaijan. And as a result, you know, some drop in the bucket gets sent to Pashinyan. But I think Azerbaijan would extract the closure of the Armenian nuclear power plant from Armenia first.
So there was this interview with Hikmet Hajiyev and Jeffrey Sachs . We’ll link to it. But this is where, like Hajiyev says, we have all this extra energy and we can help foster peace in the region and so forth. And I think Azerbaijan is going to extract a lot of investments from the European Union in exchange for floating Armenia, energetically speaking. in the near future.
Asbed Bedrossian: And the funny thing in this is that Azerbaijan’s own exports of oil and gas have gone down. They don’t have infinite reserves. And the oil and gas that’s going through the pipelines and claiming to be Azerbaijani gas, for example, is actually Russian gas.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, exactly.
Asbed Bedrossian: And the Russians are not so stupid that if they’re going to put an embargo on Armenia for Russian gas, they’re not going to let Azerbaijan export Russian gas to Armenia.
Hovik Manucharyan: So, good luck getting rid of Russians and replacing Russians with Azerbaijanis. I don’t know in what, in what world that makes sense,
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay, Hovik, as a last topic, please tell us about political prisoners in Armenia.
Asbed Bedrossian: We talked about Samvel Karapetyan, obviously, even though that is an arrested person getting arrested again.
Hovik Manucharyan: Re-arrested.
Asbed Bedrossian: Essentially going from house arrest to jail arrest.
Hovik Manucharyan: Double-arrested. Well, I mean, in other news this week, Gagik Tsarukyan’s pretrial detention was extended. But also, here’s, I think, the biggest news of the week, which is, I think, it highlights our point. On October 26th, actually, so more than a week ago,
Asbed Bedrossian: Mm-hmm.
Hovik Manucharyan: Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Court of Appeals acquitted former Vanadzor mayor, Mamikon Aslanyan, on the main charge that he was being tried for, which was like a municipal land charge involving corruption. And essentially…
Asbed Bedrossian: All the other charges were also dropped.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, so he served two, more than two years in jail. I think it’s two years and seven months in detention.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah.
Hovik Manucharyan: they dragged him, his close relations to jail they disrupted the functioning of the Vanadzor municipality all because he won the elections. This was the only reason that Pashinyan brought up these fake arrests and the fact that the Armenian courts this didn’t even have to go to EU courts the European Court of Human Rights, the fact that Armenian courts rejected this tells you a lot about how frivolous this charge was. But they were able to put him in detention for 2.7 years. And I think at one point they calculated that he had actually served more time in detention than he would have gotten had they actually found him guilty.
So not only did they keep him in jail, not only were the charges frivolous, but they actually, overall, they him under detention for more than the period that he would have gotten had he been
Asbed Bedrossian: Well, we’ve said this before.
Hovik Manucharyan: found guilty.
Asbed Bedrossian: This pretrial detention hell is basically Pashinyan
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: purgatory. There’s no judicial end to it. You can just keep renewing this for every two months. And if it comes up to a year, you can let the guy go and then bring him right back because there’s no free judiciary.
You’re right to say that it affected all of the municipal of Vanadzor. But I’m also thinking about the life of a man. Two and a half years is a significant portion of the life. His family was disrupted, and there’s absolutely no recourse.
And then they finally just wake up one morning, and the judge says, charges dropped, and the rest of them is just like, it’s been too long, we can’t deal with it anymore, goodbye, you’re free. That is just unacceptable. unacceptable and it’s happening pervasively.
Hovik Manucharyan: It’s not just unacceptable. It’s a dictatorship in Armenia. There’s no other word for it. And it’s being directly sponsored by Pashinyan’s puppet masters in Brussels.
No other way to say it.
Asbed Bedrossian: I’m sorry to repeat. Every opposition leader is in jail. Kocharyan is in jail. Tsarukyan is in jail.
Samvel Karapetyan is in jail. While the ruling party leader, Pashinyan, is claiming there is no viable opposition in the country. We need an opposition.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yes, and on that happy note,
Asbed Bedrossian: we always love to close on these terrible notes.
Hovik Manucharyan: let’s close.
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, one day we’re going to have to start telling good news at the very end. Anyway, we are recording this, well, it was November 8 when we started recording and it’s now November 9 for me. And it’s been November 9 for you the whole time, Hovik. That’s all I have.
Asbed Bedrossian: Folks, don’t forget to support us. Please share our shows with your circles. We need more eyes on our videos and like them and comment on them. You’ve done great for these things.
But we also want your support. Go to podcasts.groong.org slash donate and become a member, a sustaining member. Give regularly. And the way that helps over one-time donations is that we will know that for the next 10 months, we’re going to have some income so that we can plan our spending on upcoming services.
Hovik Manucharyan: Thank you, everyone. Please do consider supporting us. We have expenses coming that are going to be both worthwhile and also great. So thank you in advance for all of your financial support as well.
Asbed Bedrossian: I’m Asbed Bedrossian.
Hovik Manucharyan: And I’m Hovik Manucharyan.
Asbed Bedrossian: We’ll talk to you next week.
Hovik Manucharyan: Take care.
Asbed Bedrossian: Bye-bye.
Hovik Manucharyan: Bye-bye.