Speaking during a talk show aired by Russian state television over the weekend, Vladimir Solovyov expressed concern over Russia’s waning influence in Armenia and Central Asia in the context of the recent U.S. capture of Venezuela’s Russia-friendly President Nicolas Maduro.
“What's happening in Armenia is far more painful for us than what's happening in Venezuela,” Solovyov told guests on his show banned in Armenia. “The loss of Armenia is a gigantic problem. The problems in Central Asia are also a gigantic problem.”
“We need to explain that the games are over,” he went on. “International law be damned. If we launched a special military operation in Ukraine for national security reasons, why can't we launch it in other parts of our zone of influence for the same reasons?”
The statement provoked a storm of criticism from political allies of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. The Armenian Foreign Ministry handed a protest note to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kopyrkin. A ministry spokeswoman said Kopyrkin was told that Solovyov’s remarks constitute an “unacceptable encroachment and hostile act against Armenia’s sovereignty.”
Solovyov, who is known for his pro-Armenian views on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, was also criticized by some Armenian opposition leaders. One of them, Ishkhan Saghatelian of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, also decried the “hypocrisy” of Pashinian’s political team.
“You strongly condemn a single statement by a Russian analyst but have for years remained silent about direct threats from high-ranking officials of Azerbaijan and Turkey, who question the territorial integrity of Armenia and openly interfere in our internal affairs,” Saghatelian said in a Facebook post.
“On the one hand, you ask external forces [the European Union] to get directly involved in electoral processes [in Armenia,] and on the other, present the words of a single analyst as an attack on our sovereignty,” he wrote.
Nearly two years ago, the Armenian government blocked the broadcasts to Armenia of Solovyov’s political talk shows after the host denounced Yerevan’s increasingly pro-Western foreign policy and claimed that Armenians risk losing their statehood because of it.