{"id":79997,"date":"2018-05-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/blog-post\/a-difficult-way-out-for-armenia\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T11:21:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T09:21:28","slug":"a-difficult-way-out-for-armenia","status":"publish","type":"blog-post","link":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/blog-post\/a-difficult-way-out-for-armenia\/","title":{"rendered":"A Difficult Way Out for Armenia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\nProtests in Armenia are continuing to make news around the world. Whoever ends up succeeding ousted Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan will have a profoundly complicated balancing act to perform, regardless of their intention to reform.<\/b>\n\n<\/div>\n\n
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\n\nNikol Pashinyan, the de facto head of the Armenian protest movement that has overthrown Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan and brought the country to a standstill since mid-April, has enticed protestors with the promise of strengthening democratic principles and forging closer relations with the EU \u2013 two promises that he insists will fix Armenia\u2019s political and economic stagnation. However, with Armenia\u2019s lack of democratic precedence, a troubled economy that has struggled to find its way after the collapse of the USSR, a thirty year old border conflict with Azerbaijan, and the massive influence of an aggressive Russia that is eager to avoid further loss of clout to the EU after the Georgian and Ukrainian political revolutions, there are many obstacles ahead that may thwart Pashinyan\u2019s vision.\n\nArmenians have watched in frustration as Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia, fellow former-Soviet nations, have forged closer ties with the EU and strengthened democratic practice, a move that the three nations have paid heavy consequences for;\u00a0Russia has supported the creation of breakaway regions<\/a>\u00a0within their borders in an attempt to retain political influence. But the closer ties with the EU have come with benefits \u2013 in 2017 both Georgians and Ukrainians were granted visa-free access to the Schengen Zone as well as increased economic integration with the EU. \u00a0 In contrast, the Armenian passport is incredibly difficult to travel to the Schengen Zone with, much to the annoyance of the millions of Armenians with family members in Western Europe. While Sargsyan pledged to forge closer ties with the EU, he ultimately backtracked on his vow, opting instead to join the Russian-dominated Eurasian Economic Union, a move widely seen as caving in to Russian pressure.\n\nDespite Armenia\u2019s economic and democratic challenges, it is the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that remains its largest obstacle. Though Armenia gained control of the region in 1993, the resulting displacement of 500,000 people and\u00a0massacres of Azeri civilians<\/a>\u00a0have damaged Armenia\u2019s international reputation. The Russian-brokered \u201cpeace\u201d between Armenia and Azerbaijan has merely frozen the conflict, which is thawed out on a seemingly annual basis as an ever-more-prosperous and powerful Azerbaijan harasses Armenian positions. In April 2016,\u00a0the conflict had a four-day thaw<\/a>\u00a0that resulted in hundreds of Armenian causalities and considerable territorial losses. Today, the Nagorno-Karabakh problem serves as a convenient distraction for the two states, as well as a raison d\u2019\u00eatre for Russia\u2019s military presence in the South Caucasus.\n\nBecause Armenia dedicates so much of its resources and manpower towards Nagorno-Karabakh, it has consistently been ranked as\u00a0one of the most militarized societies in the world<\/a>. It also means that Armenia\u2019s border with Turkey, Azerbaijan\u2019s traditional ally, is closed. Turkey is unwilling to open relations with Armenia as long as it occupies Azeri land. Thus Armenia\u2019s only open borders are with Iran, a country that does not bring it any closer to the west, and Georgia, which is beset with problems on its Russian border. Of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Pashinyan differs very little from his predecessors, and has insisted that Armenia should continue its occupation of the region \u2013 a platform that could prove to be a thorn in his side should he follow through with concrete attempts of reform.\n\nFinally, when considering the possibility of reform, there is the elephant in the room \u2013 Russia\u2019s extensive military presence and political influence in Armenia. Armenians would do well to consider the difficulties that Georgia and Ukraine have experienced as they leave Moscow\u2019s sway. With two military bases in Armenia, Russia is unlikely to sit by idly if Armenia gets too comfortable with the EU. Pashinyan insists that his movement is neither pro-Russian nor Pro-Western, but as the world has seen in Georgia and Ukraine, in Putin\u2019s area of influence, there is no middle path. Whoever ends up succeeding ousted Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan will have a profoundly complicated balancing act to perform, regardless of their intention to reform.\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":68605,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"archive-status":[],"region":[1849],"custom-themes":[],"class_list":["post-79997","blog-post","type-blog-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","region-europa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-post\/79997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blog-post"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"archive-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive-status?post=79997"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=79997"},{"taxonomy":"custom-themes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foraus.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom-themes?post=79997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}