Kocharyan arrested ahead of Putin meeting – What is Pashinyan’s goal?

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will meet on September 1 in Bishkek on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit.

TodayPress TV, citing Publika.az, reports that the meeting had been agreed upon in advance. Immediately after this agreement was reached, Robert Kocharyan, Armenia’s second president and leader of the opposition “Armenia” bloc, who is friendly with Putin, was arrested.

On August 31, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Kocharyan, who is currently being held in a pretrial detention center in Yerevan, on his birthday – the former Armenian president turned 72. It should be recalled that Putin has never congratulated Pashinyan on his victory in parliamentary elections.

The developments are being widely discussed among experts, including in Russia.

Some experts believe that Pashinyan intends to use Kocharyan and other political prisoners in Armenia as leverage in negotiations with Russia.

Andrey Areshov, an expert at the Russian Foundation for Strategic Culture, believes that this is a mistake on Pashinyan’s part:

“I do not think this is the right tactic, because it is unlikely that such tricks will have a constructive impact on the conversation or on a serious discussion of the problems that have accumulated in Russian-Armenian relations. Most likely, this process will make the dialogue less productive.”