If Aliyev Kills 99% of Armenians, EU Will Thank Him for the Museum

In one of the episode’s most visceral moments, Hovik articulates a fear many Armenians now harbor about Europe’s stance toward Azerbaijan. The remark, delivered with dark sarcasm, reflects the perceived logic of EU priorities: if regional stability, energy security, and transit corridors are paramount, then the ethnic composition of the region becomes irrelevant. Hovik suggests that the EU’s praise for Aliyev’s “peace and cooperation” would remain unchanged even if that cooperation involved the wholesale elimination of Armenia’s population, with only a tiny fraction preserved as historical artifacts.

This hyperbolic warning points to a genuine anxiety about how far Europe is willing to go in accommodating Azerbaijan’s regional ambitions. The ethnic cleansing of Artsakh in September 2023, which displaced 150,000+ Armenians from their homeland, drew muted EU responses focused on “encouraging reconciliation” rather than accountability for forced displacement. The continued detention of Armenian prisoners of war in Baku elicited no significant EU diplomatic pressure. Against this backdrop, Hovik’s dark thought experiment is less absurd than it initially appears: it extrapolates from the EU’s demonstrated tolerance for ethnic cleansing to a logical but terrifying endpoint.

The hosts emphasize that Armenia cannot rely on Western powers for security or justice. Instead, they argue, Armenia must build its own strength and cultivate genuine allies in Russia and Iran, despite the ideological and historical complexities those relationships entail. The alternative, they suggest, is a slow-motion capitulation in which Armenia is traded away piecemeal to satisfy European energy needs and Turkish regional ambitions.