ARMENIAN GROTESQUE

Internal political tension in Armenia is boiling again. Headlines of news agencies exploded on February 25: "Military coup!", "Army intervened in politics!" etc. Armenian Chief of the General Staff, Onik Gasparyan, demanded the Prime Minister, Supreme Commander-in-Chief Nikol Pashinyan to resign. In turn, the latter sent Gasparyan into retirement. Yet the chief of staff did not want to resign and repeated his demand. Both supporters and opponents of the prime minister took to the streets with loudspeakers, overnight stays on the square, fights...

But what's behind the scenes?

Aftershocks of the lost war, or the Iskander strike

The ongoing events in Armenia are mainly the aftershocks of the military defeat of Yerevan in Garabagh. It is always difficult to lose, especially after 30 years of propaganda claiming that “Armenia has a regular army, but what Azerbaijan calls an army is just groups of armed militants”, “Azerbaijanis do not know how to fight and will run away at first shots”. Especially during the 44 days of the war, when the official propaganda kept repeating about the unprecedented successes of the Armenian army. Back on November 2 (!) the spokesman of the Armenian Ministry of Defense, Artsrun Hovhannisyan, reported about Azerbaijan's "disrupted blitzkrieg".

Armenians took to the streets within hours after Pashinyan signed the act of surrender "in a secret place". But it seems he did not understand that it would be impossible to hide the event for a long time.

Armenia has suffered several incidents since then. In Yerevan, protesters stormed the parliament and the office of Pashinyan stealing his perfume and computer from the latter. Opposition also took to the streets and even nominated its candidate to replace Pashinyan. Leaders of the ousted Garabagh clan, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, have become active too.

Many experts believe that, by and large, it was Pashinyan's rash statement about the Iskander missiles that caused such a turn of events. He was accused of not using this "miracle weapon" against Azerbaijan. Then came the revelation of General Movses Hakobyan, claiming that they launched the missile but he would not tell exactly where. Armenian bloggers immediately presented their own version: there was a single shot but the target was not Baku or Ganja but Shusha, when the Azerbaijani Army had already knocked out Armenian military from the city. Former President Serzh Sargsyan blamed Pashinyan in his interview: it was necessary to use Iskander on the fourth day of the war to hit Baku! Nikol snapped back: Iskanders either did not work at all, or were effective by 10%...

Baku has always reported that Iskanders were not used in Garabagh. To hit the residential areas of Ganja and the Mingachevir HPP, Armenians used missiles SKAD and Tochka U. In addition, there were attempts to shoot down civilian aircraft approaching Baku using the S-300 missiles and Barda and Tartar using the Smerch MLRS but not Iskanders. According to Azerbaijan, the reason is simple: the control panel of Iskanders is in Moscow. In other words, it was too risky to allow Armenia not only to demonstrate these missiles at the parade but also to use them. This could also undermine the interests of Russia in its relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey. Therefore, for obvious reasons, Moscow preferred to prevent such a scenario.

But now the Iskanders, which have never been launched in the Garabagh war, turned into an internal political weapon that everyone uses for his own benefit.

But this discussion cost a position for the Deputy Chief of General Staff, Tigran Khachatryan. In one of his interviews, he called Pashinyan's statement about a 10% effectiveness of the Iskander missiles ‘unserious’. And Onik Gasparyan, who perhaps could no longer turn a blind eye to the situation, removed Khachatryan from his position.

Generals against Varchapet

Nikol Pashinyan's relations with the military elite have been tense even before the ongoing events. After coming to power in spring 2018, he declared war on corruption, especially in the army. Arrest of General Manvel Grigoryan was the most heinous episode of this process but not the only one. Investigators found in Grigoryan’s mansion boxes with tinned stew, an ambulance car, underwear for soldiers, toilet paper and even a funeral wreath. Articles with indignant statements of unnamed military officials began to appear in the Yerevan media, claiming that Pashinyan's "purges" created an intolerable situation in the army. That the military leaders have to guess who will be fired tomorrow, which makes it simply impossible to concentrate on their real obligations... And Pashinyan was forced to stop the purges. Moreover, high-profile cases have never been taken to courts but  the whole process left him with a very unpleasant after-taste.

Pashinyan’s position of "varchapet" (prime minister or ruler) was shaken after he gave the CSTO Secretary General Yuri Khachaturov flack during the first weeks of his premiership, while the Armenian military elite considers Khachaturov from among them, unlike Pashinyan. Moreover, the Armenian army with the strongest pro-Russian sentiments did not appreciate Nikol Pashinyan's pro-Western gestures. In such a situation, the dismissal of Khachatryan could well have triggered the current situation.

Failed coup in Yerevan

Vitaly Korotich, former editor-in-chief of the super popular Soviet magazine Ogonyok in the late 1980s-early 1990s, shared his memories of the 1991 coup initiated by the State Emergency Committee in one of his interviews. Korotich heard about the incident when he was in the United States: “... I began making statements on American television, I was on almost all channels. I said some nice things like our people would never do so, like this is a junta, like we will stop this. So, one night my colleagues took me to a very popular television program, The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS. I was in their New York studio, and in Washington was a KGB fugitive dressed in a wig and black glasses, completely disguised. And again, I began to make trivial statements. Then suddenly that guy said: “You know, this is such nonsense. This is not a coup. Coups are usually made on Fridays or Saturdays. Because they need those weekend days to capture all positions, to get everything done before the people go to work on Monday. But this one took place on Monday. This is so unprofessional! This is not a coup. It is nonsense. They’ll fail."

What Onik Gasparyan did in Yerevan is far from a coup and even a military rebellion. The army is not on the streets, there are no armoured vehicles on the streets of cities, no one is willing to take control of the post office, telephone companies, train stations and airports, turn off the Internet. Gasparyan does not announce his capture of the power but simply advises the prime minister to leave. In turn, Pashinyan does not leave and removes Gasparyan. Gasparyan, who soon after the defeat in Garabagh resigned but then changed his mind, now refuses to leave his post again...

What seemed whimsy may well end in tragedy, as the army's intervention in politics is too dangerous a precedent. It is no coincidence that most external observers call on all sides in Yerevan to show restraint and emphasize that the army's interference in politics is unacceptable.

But if we flashback to two years ago, we can see how the media praised the fighters of the Armenian "peacekeeping brigade", which supported Pashinyan during his "shishlik revolution". It was necessary to think about the inadmissibility of the army's interference in politics at that time. So, now we can only observe the events in Yerevan, which may well develop into a full-scale civil war.

I could stop writing here. But there is one more and perhaps the most important aspect of the issue. Armenia has long received very powerful and effective weapons from its allies, including Russia, as a gift. It is not clear who takes control over this weapon. That’s why the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev warned about the consequences of such a situation during his recent press conference: “Armenia is a country gripped by chaos. The army does not obey the leadership. They do not know whether there was a military coup or not. This is so tragicomic. There are people walking with loudspeakers, night tents, hooligans on the streets. What a shame! The whole world is laughing at them – at both the Armenian authorities and opposition. How can one hand over such a dangerous weapon to them?!"

In other words, the failed military coup turns into an alarming situation in Armenia. It is necessary to react today. Rather, it was necessary to react yesterday.