The Prime Minister on His Relationship with Putin

There is an issue within the Russian elite concerning everything that has happened in Armenia, particularly regarding the distrust towards those who worked in the public sector prior to the revolution and were funded by international organizations. This was stated by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during a discussion at the CivilNet studio.

He assessed his relationship with Vladimir Putin as very good, but noted that there are generally two dimensions to their relationship: “There is my personal communication and relations with Putin, and there are the relations between institutions. I want to be very clear: yes, there is an issue within the Russian elite concerning everything that has happened in Armenia, namely the popular revolution and the people who came to power through that revolution. And who are those people? They are individuals who were previously in the political opposition and political activists. We know that those who had certain principles did not want to cooperate with the previous authorities, and in many cases, those people had to find a place within the public sector. This public sector has often been funded by international organizations, including those international organizations that are not well regarded in Russia and the former Soviet space. Why did those people end up there? Because they did not want to cooperate with the authorities, they did not want to accept the rules of the power game; they had principles and wanted to remain within those principles. They needed a certain field of activity; they were representatives of civil society and interacted with international organizations, and were also funded by them.

As a result, distrust towards certain officials has formed in Russia, which, according to Pashinyan, will be overcome over time: “And due to this fact, we often see distrust, and I am convinced that this distrust will be overcome in time. I do not think there are such issues regarding me in Russia. But as long as these institutions have not sufficiently interacted with each other and have not assured themselves that they are dealing with the sovereign officials of a sovereign country, these issues will arise.” He added, “I do not see a tragedy in this.”