Turan Research Center

For years before Russia invaded Ukraine, Western leaders reassured themselves that longtime Russian President Vladimir Putin was merely posturing. The consensus held that Russia’s all-out propaganda blitz—talking heads on state TV denying Ukrainian sovereignty, calls for referendums in the east, and warnings of Euro-Atlantic encroachment—was empty political posturing and was not meant literally. Even weeks before the invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, now rightly remembered as a stalwart hero of Ukraine’s defense, insisted that Russia’s threats to invade were mere rhetoric. Until they were not.

The same vocabulary is now being aimed at Armenia, and last week, Putin took it on himself. Days after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan explicitly announced that Armenia was not Russia’s ally in the war on Ukraine, Putin warned that the country is “now living through everything that is happening on the Ukrainian track”—a path that began with Ukraine’s move toward the EU and ended in “the coup d’état, the Crimea story, the position of southeastern Ukraine, and military actions.” As an alternative, Putin proposed an overt referendum on whether Armenia should break with Russia, followed by “a soft, civilized, and mutually beneficial separation.”

Read the full article on The National Interest.

Joseph Epstein is Director of the Turan Research Center.