Ukraine's heroic struggle liberates post-Soviet space — political scientist Piontkovsky

He shared his opinions on Espreso TV.

"Putin did not surrender Armenia today, he surrendered it two years ago. It was a combination of two reasons. The first is that he cannot, because Turkey has clearly shown that it will stand by Azerbaijan. And Putin's troops will be confronting the Turks in three regions, and they are ready to shoot at each other: Nagorno-Karabakh, Libya, and Syria. And everywhere, Turkey has a tactical operational advantage, which is much stronger, and Putin understands this. And secondly, in addition to geopolitical arguments, he also has a personal hatred for Pashinyan," the political scientist said.

Andrey Piontkovsky reminded that when Pashinyan came to power, he pursued a rather pro-Russian policy. At all General Assembly votes, he voted against resolutions condemning Russia, there was nothing pro-Ukrainian about his position.

"But for Putin, there was an unbearable precedent - a man who came to power from the street, from street protests. And this was an absolutely unacceptable precedent for him. You look at the position of the Russian media, all the propagandists, both during the Karabakh war in 2022 and today - to punish Pashinyan. This is one of the reasons for their behaviour. And also, Russia lacks strength. Its position is weakened throughout the post-Soviet space," Piontkovsky stressed.

According to him, Kazakhstan is also behaving in a completely different way now.

"By the way, you saw an event this week - a meeting with five Central Asian republics. Even at one of the meetings, the very faithful Rakhmon (President of the Republic of Tajikistan - ed.) threw Putin in his face: why are you treating us as if we were union republics, we are no longer your union republics. Ukraine, through its heroic struggle, has long since liberated the entire post-Soviet space and shown that Putin has no resources and is incapable of pursuing a colonial policy," the publicist concluded.

• On 11 September, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia wanted to "figure out" why Armenia was conducting military exercises with the United States and not the CSTO.
• 14 September Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan says in an interview with Politico that Russian peacekeepers have failed in their mission in Nagorno-Karabakh.
• 20 September Armenia appeals to the European Court of Human Rights to take action against Azerbaijan over its military operation.