The authors of this report advise the EU leadership to immediately grant Armenia candidate status in the European Union, and most importantly, to expand security cooperation with Armenia. They say that Armenia “finds itself in a highly precarious security environment,” and that evil Azerbaijan “continues to pose a military threat and is signaling that it will attack Armenia.”
Where exactly the authors of the report saw this “signal” is not specified. On the other hand, the “friends of Armenia” are very much vocal about Azerbaijan’s “occupation” of as much as 200 km² of “Armenia’s sovereign territory”. Not surprisingly, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry accused the authors of the report of slander. Azerbaijan is not preparing any “attack” on Armenia, but Yerevan is planning revenge and re-occupation of Azerbaijani territories. Azerbaijan is not “occupying” any “200 km² of Armenia’s sovereign territory”, but Armenia keeps seven Azerbaijani villages under occupation, and the fact of occupation of at least four of them is already grudgingly recognized in Yerevan. These are by no means all mistakes and falsehoods made by the authors of the report, and it is hardly out of ignorance.
A year ago, in mid-March 2023, Anders Fogh Rasmussen visits Armenia. Yerevan attempts to present this as its big diplomatic victory in the West: a former NATO Secretary General, a former Danish Prime Minister! And then unseemly details appear in the press: first of all, by the time the former Secretary General started his “work” with Yerevan, his reputation was hopelessly tainted. Six months before his visit to Armenia, in October 2022, Rasmussen had become the subject of interest of the Latvian police, as he was the deputy head of the independent management group of the Latvian PNB Bank, also known as Norvik Banka. This bank went through a very scandalous bankruptcy. And before that, he was “featured” in a dubious attempt to “save” the assets of the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Sberbank, which had trouble operating in Ukraine after the Crimea changed hands in 2014. And secondly, Rasmussen simply practices paid lobbying. The average rate per “share” ranges from 150 to 400 thousand dollars. His visit to Armenia was paid within this range, and the Armenian government itself was the one paying for it.
And if we were not talking about the country that kept Azerbaijani territories under occupation for 30 years, committed genocide of Azerbaijani population, lost the war and continues to make plans for revenge, the situation would be reminiscent of that old joke about a confectionery shop: “Can I order a cake with several tiers and with the inscription ‘To dear Karapet from his coworkers’? — Of course you can! — Here, your cake is ready, shall I put it in a pretty box for you? — No, thank you, I’ll eat it here.”
The latest report seems to have cost Pashinyan even more money. After all, it is not only Rasmussen alone who is now asking to be paid, but the whole “Friends of Armenia Network”. The names sound high-profile: Mikuláš Dzurinda, President of the Martens Center, Minister of Foreign Affairs (2010-2012), Prime Minister of Slovakia (1998-2006); Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Member of the European Parliament, Marshal of the Sejm (2005), Minister of Foreign Affairs (2001-2005), Prime Minister of Poland (1996-1997); Anne-Laurence Petel, member of the National Assembly of France, Chair of the Parliamentary Group of Friendship with Armenia; Raimundas Lopata, member of the Seimas of Lithuania, Chair of the Parliamentary Group of Friendship with Armenia; Stefan Füle, Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy (2010-2014), Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic (2009); Dietmar Nietan, Member of the German Bundestag, Treasurer of the Social Democratic Party; Els Van Hoof, member of the Belgian House of Representatives, Head of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, Senator (2008, 2009-2014); Charles Flanagan, member of the Irish Parliament, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense, Minister for Justice (2017-2020), Minister for Foreign Affairs (2014-2017) …
But in reality, these are the worst representatives of that political “crowd” that President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev described very accurately in one of his interviews: “We are witnessing this now not only in France, but also in most European countries, when people with significant authority in their own countries and in the international arena left the stage and some random people, populists and demagogues came instead, and we can see what this has led to.”
Stefan Füle, the former Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy, held this office right at the time when Serzh Sargsyan, a co-conspirator of the Khojaly genocide, was negotiating Armenia’s signing of an association agreement with the European Union. Moreover, Mr. Füle did not even bother to ask how Armenia would be integrated into the European Union, given its reliance on Russia for everything. This epic saga ended quite predictably: Yerevan refused to sign the agreement at the last moment, which sent the European partners into a deep shock. But now Mr. Füle “can do it again”. Either he enjoyed being a victim of Armenian political fraud, or the fee was too tempting.
Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, former Prime Minister of Poland, was involved in a major corruption scandal: in 2001, while serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs, he “forgot” to mention shares in the Polish oil company Orlen in his asset declaration. The following year he submitted three declarations, and there was no mention of the shares in any of them. His assistant in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Anna Jarucka both confirmed and denied this fact, but it had an understandable effect on Mr. Cimoszewicz’s reputation. However, this corruption trail did not prevent him from being elected to the European Parliament, which, however, is not so surprising given the corruption scandals in the European Parliament itself. Here, too, this individual managed to get involved in an ugly scandal: the former prime minister ran over a 70-year-old woman cyclist at a crosswalk and fled the scene. Moreover, his car had not passed vehicle inspection.
Former Slovak Prime Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda, now President of the W. Martens Center for European Studies, has also been caught in a major corruption scandal. According to the current authorities of Slovakia, this “friend of Armenia” ran a massive sale of state property and awarded state orders for kickbacks. The sums with seven zeros in euros were first transferred to London to the addresses of paper companies, and from there they were funneled to countries where the structure of a company’s owners may not be disclosed. The scandal in Slovakia was so resonant that Dzurinda was forced to withdraw from the parliamentary elections. Just to be on the safe side.
Raimundas Lopata, a member of the Lithuanian Seimas, turned up at a parliamentary session, shall we say, in a heavily intoxicated state. And even made the TV news.
Charles Flanagan, a former member of the Irish parliament and former Irish Minister of Justice, is known as a staunch supporter of the legalization of same-sex marriage. And this is not only a reason to recall Pashinyan’s infamous gaffe about the “boy” who brought him coffee in Paris, and the late Sergei Dorenko’s scathing comment on the subject. What is important is that Mr. Flanagan simply likes “to see where the wind blows”. He is eager to join any campaign that will yield at least some dividends, even those with a distinct whiff of dirt. In short, this is a case of “who needs enemies when you have friends like that”.
But Armenia, it seems, does not have much of a choice. Yerevan needs at least some trump cards for the scandalous meeting on April 5. The West, despite its willingness to play provocative games, still wants to see something more real on the Armenian track than talk of “freezing” Armenia’s activity in the CSTO, which has not been formalized on paper. And Pashinyan is afraid to take real anti-Russian moves. That is why he has to resort to a tried and tested tool: using those who are ready to promote Armenian interests simply for money. The only trouble is that honest and principled politicians simply will not engage in paid lobbying. So they have to “work” with those who are ready to defend anyone’s interests for a fee, be it the interests of Armenia, or Russia’s Sberbank, or LGBT, or Saddam Hussein, like Charles Pasqua, one of France’s famous Armenian lobbyists…
And all this jiggery-pokery leaves a persistent sense of deja vu. All this already happened more than a hundred years ago, on the eve and during the First World War. At that time, Western capitals were making plans to “push the Ottomans into the Konya Vilayet”, and the Armenian leadership was assigned an important role in the execution of these plans, promises were generously given to Armenian politicians, various kinds of “friends of Armenia” societies were a dime a dozen in European capitals, but when it got really “hot”, Armenia and Armenians were simply thrown off the board.
And history has a way of repeating itself.
