Yerevan’s Habit of Being More Oriented Toward Putin Hasn’t Changed: Moscow Opinion

“Two bears in one den cannot get along.” If you believe the WikiLeaks findings, then a few years ago Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said this to US diplomats referring to the Russian tandem. CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) leaders have so far avoided publicly responding to the reshuffling within the tandem, which is quite reasonable, writes Moskovskiye Novosti [“Moscow News”] reporter Arkadi Dubnov.

However, the journalist believes that Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan is perhaps the only one among CIS leaders who might be happy about Putin’s return to the Kremlin, “and not because Medvedev’s presidency didn’t bring any tangible dividends to Yerevan in the Karabakh settlement, but that there was no gift for Baku either.”

“There’s another issue here: Armenian authorities in recent years managed to build relations with Moscow that generally depend little on what the name of the Kremlin leader is. Although the habit of being more oriented toward Putin and his team seems to have remained the same in Yerevan,” Dubnov writes.