Russian-Armenian Relations – A Brief Retelling by Viktor Alexandrov

“Armenians, you believed and waited for our help in 1915, and after a couple of years, we gave your lands to the Turks, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians, and you were forced to live in the “prison of nations.” But you continued to believe in our friendship and fraternity.

The best sons and daughters of your people sacrificed their lives on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, but we were so bold that we didn’t even declare war on Turkey which actually sided with Hitler and did not let you restore historical justice. And you continued to believe in our friendship and brotherhood.

When you faced the earthquake and your towns were ruined, we all didn’t care so much that the first rescuers came from France, not from Russia. But you again believed in our friendship and brotherhood. You were slaughtered and killed in Sumgait and in Baku, but we again didn’t care about the bloodbath. We woke up only when you already had thousands of victims.

But you still believed in our friendship and brotherhood. When the Artsakh war began, you again waited for our support. We arranged Operation Ring for you, took the Shahumyan district away from you, bombarded your churches and your houses, deported you from your own land, helped your enemy to attack you in the Martakert direction, and imposed peace negotiations on you to prevent you from winning.

And you continued to believe in our friendship and brotherhood. We have taken you into our economic union, and you thought that everything would be fine, that we would help you develop the industry and the economy. But we again deceived you and accepted you into our economic space not to help you but to weaken you even more. Because more people will leave your homeland.

But you again believed in our friendship. You erected monuments to the soldiers of our country, and your classic Khachatur Abovian blessed the leg of a Russian soldier who entered the land of Armenia. But our army shot you in your own markets and slaughtered your children in your own homes. And you still believed in our friendship and brotherhood.

We promised you to erect several monuments and provide you with a credit for the rearmament of your army, but at the same time, we had sold so many weapons to your enemy that they could have wiped your Armenia 4 times already. Armenians, dear, naive Armenians, continue to believe in our friendship and fraternity.”

Here is such a free retelling of history, a little exaggerated by me. Why did I write this? A new batch of weaponry was ordered by Azerbaijan, now including tanks, armored vehicles, artillery systems, and flamethrowers. Our officials from Rosoboronexport want to sell it again.

I’m curious, is it only me who thinks that selling weapons to terrorists who will kill our allies tomorrow is mean and immoral? Comrades, representatives of Rosoboronexport, when will you have enough? Your excuses that the sold weapons can be controlled are ridiculous. Give a grenade to a monkey and try to control it.

From the high tribunes, it can only be heard that Russia defies international terrorism and the policy of misanthropy. Maybe, we arm those who we should fight against just because we aren’t looking for an easy victory.

Well, to top it off, I just want to apologize to the Armenians for each bullet sold, and I want to assure you that the Russian people and Russian officials are different from each other. The majority of Russians condemn such a policy and stand with you shoulder to shoulder, as they stood in the battle of Sarıkamış and in many other battles, no matter how many weapons the current Judas have sold.

Viktor Alexandrov