“Haykakan Zhamanak” says Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s tour of agricultural markets in Yerevan on Monday disproved a widely held belief that fresh fruits and vegetables in Armenia now cost a lot more than they did a year ago. “The prices are determined by the market and the [recent] revolution has nothing to do with them,” says the paper linked to Pashinian. It says that claims to the contrary made on social media are “propaganda” ploys designed to deny official statistics showing that food prices in the country remained stable in July.
“Zhamanak” dismisses critics’ warnings that the “people’s direct rule” declared by Pashinian at his August 17 rally is a serious threat to Armenia’s constitution and state institutions. The paper says that this new system of governance is only a tool for Pashinian to “bring the velvet revolution to a logical conclusion: namely, pre-term general elections.”
“Zhoghovurd” quotes Belarus’s President Aleksandr Lukashenko as saying that he was right to oppose the appointment of Armenia’s retired General Yuri Khachaturov as secretary general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). “Representatives of the former government were trying to make us believe that charging Khachaturov with an overthrow of the constitutional order could reflect negatively on Armenia’s relations with other CSTO member states,” comments the paper. “Now the head of one of those states, Belarus, is not only not defending Khachaturov but also saying that they objected to his candidacy right from the beginning.”
Interviewed by “168 Zham,” a Russian political analyst, Stanislav Tarasov, comments on talk of Azerbaijan’s possible accession to the CSTO. Tarasov says that Baku is trying to capitalize on Armenia’s current tensions with Russia sparked by Khachaturov’s prosecution. He says that if Azerbaijan does join the CSTO or at least gain an observer status in the organization it will “neutralize the impact of Russia’s CSTO-related actions of support for Armenia.” “That would resemble the situation where Greece and Turkey are both members of NATO,” he adds.
(Tigran Avetisian)
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