BY GAREN YEGPARIAN
By now, everyone is aware of the audio recording that went viral on the Internet between the chiefs of the Republic of Armenia’s (RoA) National Security Service and the Special Security Service Artur Vanetsyan and Sasun Khachatryan, respectively.
There are so many things wrong about this and the ensuing reactions that it’s almost mind-boggling.
The most obvious wrong is the fact that it happened at all. And, we know it’s not a fake because one of the two officials confirmed that conversation did occur. The fact that two high ranking government officials could be so completely obliviously recorded, then outed, is a problem. It is a sign of incompetence on the part of the security apparatus of the country.
The rush to judgment by Prime Minister Nigol Pashinyan in his assertion that it was not the Russians is another problem, and should give anyone pause. The intelligence agency of any significant power could have pulled this off (France, Great Britain, Israel, Russia, Turkey, U.S., and many more) if that country’s policy required that the RoA’s politics be roiled, or at least distracted, by scandals. But even more obvious is that fact that to know Russia did not do it requires that it be known who DID actually do it. If that’s the case, Pashinyan should have named the culprit, instead of saying an investigation has been launched.
Who really did it? Who has an interest in creating this kind of internal strife, besides foreign powers? It could be, as Pashinyan and his circle have suggested, that it is the work of “anti-revolutionary”