Makhachkala Corridor Will Have Extremely Serious Geopolitical Consequences, Kocharyan Says

At that time, the country was in a very serious state. The national budget was only $300 million. A teacher's salary was 5,000 drams, and pensions were 2,500 drams, which were not paid for a year. Now, if you leave all that aside and fall after the former ones, grab this one, grab that one, you are spending all your energy on something that in the end will only see two or three people judged. This was stated the day before during a meeting with the citizens of Kotayk Province and the activists of the 'Armenia' alliance by the second President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, addressing the question of whether he regrets not having given a political assessment of the former authorities in 1998.

“We should not forget that there was political tension in the country at that time, there was dissatisfaction with the authorities, but we did not lose a war, having casualties and such losses. Such things did not happen at that time. Back then, it would really have looked more like some kind of vendetta, which I did not want to do. The past has a dangerous aspect; you can go and remain there, unable to come back. When your gaze is constantly on the past, it is difficult to see the future,” he noted.

Kocharyan stated that in terms of governance, we should look forward. “Looking at your feet, you always fall in some way; you also need to look far.”

Addressing the issue of the Makhachkala corridor, Kocharyan said: “In general, the word corridor should not be used now. If we are talking about the freedom of all communications and free movement, then yes, all communications should work freely. What does corridor mean? Discussing it as a corridor at this moment is not beneficial for us. When they say, ‘it will open soon, everything will start to work,’ that is not the case, because if they, and they have already announced, Turkey is building a railway from Nakhchivan to Igdir, it will be a section of 82-87 kilometers. Once they connect it, they are not going to open that railway. It will become a corridor linking Turkey with Azerbaijan and Central Asian countries.”

According to the second president, this corridor will lead to extremely serious geopolitical consequences.