Armenian authorities risk leaving country vulnerable to major powers, opposition MP says

Armenia’s current leadership risks  pushing the country into a position where it could be trampled by major powers amid a changing global order, opposition MP Elinar Vardanyan said on Friday, criticising the government’s approach to security, governance and the economy.

Speaking at the discussion “Threats to the Security of Armenia and the Armenian World”, Vardanyan, a member of the opposition Hayastan faction, said external security risks could be divided into three main groups: the formation of a new world order, hybrid warfare and military-technological threats.

According to her, the reshaping of the global order poses particularly serious challenges for small states, which must carefully choose allies and pursue well-calculated policies to avoid marginalisation.

“In our case, the key task is at least not to be trampled underfoot,” Vardanyan said. “But we have authorities who are quite capable of leading the country to a situation where, in the current geopolitical environment, we end up under the feet of major powers.”

She argued that the current government itself has become one of the main sources of hybrid threats facing the country.

Turning to internal security, Vardanyan pointed to multiple dimensions, including legal, educational, economic and social factors. She said Armenia is experiencing an unprecedented level of social injustice.

“I don’t think we’ve seen such an atmosphere of social injustice in Armenia for a very long time,” she said.

On economic security, Vardanyan warned that the government’s treatment of investors was undermining confidence and discouraging investment. She said that portraying domestic investors as criminals had a direct negative impact on economic security.

“Investments dropped sharply last year, and the entire process around the Electric Networks of Armenia is a serious signal to all potential investors,” she said, referring to recent controversies involving the country’s power distribution company. “They simply do not feel protected.”

She added that investors, observing the state of Armenia’s legal system, would conclude that they had little chance of defending their rights if their investments faced a fate similar to that of Electric Networks of Armenia.

Vardanyan also criticised Armenia’s democratic institutions, calling them weak and politically dependent.

“One of the pillars of any state’s security is stable democratic institutions,” she said. “Institutions must be stable so that people have guarantees for the protection of their rights.”

She accused law enforcement agencies, the judiciary, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Supreme Judicial Council of serving the interests of a single individual, rather than acting independently. She also said that Armenia’s Constitutional Court could no longer be expected to deliver genuinely constitutional decisions.