There is a Real Danger of Talking About All of Armenia in the Past Tense: Artak Zakaryan

Why is Nikol clinging to his chair? This is stated by former National Assembly member from the Republican Party of Armenia, Artak Zakaryan, on his Facebook page.

“Soon, three years will have passed since Nikol seized power. Analyzing all the events that have taken place since the regime change in 2018, we can conclude the following:

1. After the unsuccessful war against Armenia in April 2016, hostile structures acting against Armenian sovereignty and the independence of Artsakh changed their tactics and activated plans to undermine Armenia from within.

2. The total propaganda against President Serzh Sargsyan, the national army, the Armenian-Russian strategic partnership, the CSTO system, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the key structures of the Republic of Armenia, and the authorities of Artsakh was fully activated. For this purpose, all types of public organizations and media, acting with grants, religious sects, certain student circles from universities, segments of the Armenian diaspora, and, of course, several political parties registered in Armenia were used. I do not exclude that some circles belonging to the previous power could also be involved in this.

3. A leader was necessary for the regime change, and naturally, they had to correspond to its goals. That is, he had to be anti-Russian, anti-CSTO, anti-EAEU, anti-Artsakh, non-national, principled, and lacking moral character (“isms” were rejected); they had several options but chose Nikol.

4. With a pre-trained team, using various technological tricks, informational manipulations, and Facebook resources, the regime change began brewing in February 2018, which reached its resolution in May. However, since the former authorities still had control over the parliament, the final phase of the complete seizure of power ended with the parliamentary elections on December 9, 2018.

5. It is clear that Nikol, the designated leader of the regime change, was not brought to power for nothing. The goal was to close the issue of Artsakh and completely take control of Armenia. However, for this, it was necessary that this so-called revolution completely divided the traditionally respectful Armenian society. The conflicts between the past and present that began and the accompanying intense false propaganda in 2019-2020 also led to the disintegration of the army, family, friendship, and social ties. The Armenian language was completely debased; public insults became accessible and readable for everyone, big and small. Society was becoming morally degraded month by month, without realizing the tragic consequences of it. The intelligentsia was pushed out of this game from the very beginning and isolated. Meanwhile, unknown pages were unleashed through Facebook, throwing fake intellectuals and opinion leaders into the public sphere, through which any absurd opinion was generated, even the most unlikely false news fed to the broad masses.

6. The sprouts of regime change, accompanied by the sowing of internal enmity, quickly spread to Artsakh, where in 2018-2019 it was possible to completely confuse the segment of the Artsakh Armenian population, who knew the price of their security. The false opposition between Artsakh and Armenia was also being carefully spread.

7. Concurrently, in unseen political platforms, the logical structure for solving the Artsakh issue in the OSCE format, the strong Armenian-Russian relations, the friendly ties with Georgia and Iran, and the Armenia-EU partnership were being dismantled. Armenia was turning into an international ballast, and the Artsakh issue was turning from a peaceful resolution into an unnecessary headache for the world, from which it was necessary to get rid of by any means.

8. The judicial system also needed to be dissolved so that there were no legal means to halt the process of state decay. For this purpose, the judicial power and especially the Constitutional Court began to be accused of allegedly serving the interests of the previous authorities.

9. After the clashes in Tavush in 2020, everything was ready to provoke a war in Artsakh and secure the defeat of the Armenian side. The preliminary military-political analyses of the entire course of the war and even the surrender of Shushi hint at a deliberate failure of the war.

10. All points of the capitulation statement of November 10, 2020, have been fulfilled, except for one—the corridor planned between Nakhchivan and Azerbaijan through the territory of Syunik. It is highly likely that this process will also end in March, and it is assumed that there should be another high-level meeting. Azerbaijan has already received its share from Nikol, and now only Turkey remains. Turkey needs the transit corridor through Syunik very much; that is why Ankara was seriously concerned about the possible loss of Nikol's power. The rally of Nikol's supporters on March 1, 2020, was aimed not at the Armenian people or the opposition but primarily at Turkey. With this, Nikol wanted to assure Turkey that he still has the resources to remain in power and that there is no need to worry.

11. After giving the Syunik corridor, Nikol will have fully justified all the plans for the regime change that took place in April 2018. As for what the future of Armenia and Artsakh will be after that, neither Nikol nor the authors of the regime change are interested anymore.

12. The pain is that we have been constantly talking about this, piecemeal, episode by episode. However, the Nikolist society did not listen to us because we are former officials. Now, when there is a real danger that all of Armenia will become a thing of the past—that is, that discussions about the state of Armenia and the Armenian army will happen in the past tense—at least now we must save what remains and overthrow the fake revolutionaries from power,” he wrote.