Soros penetrates insight Armenia?

TFounder of the Open Society Foundations George Soros in his microblog on Twitter made a post dedicated to Armenia. In particular, he expressed his vision of the development of democracy in Armenia.

"The strong support of civil society in Armenia is vital for the democratic present and future of the country", he wrote.

Soros also shared a link to an article entitled “How the United States can support young democracy in Armenia”, published recently on the Foundation’s website.

What can the “support” of Soros for Armenia lead to? The situation is in principle predictable and not new - this is a proven technology that has already been successfully used by some western states in several countries.

In those countries where some western states received absolute power, processes began to liquidate state institutions so that they cease to be competitive with respect to their own state institutions. And the defense institutions of any state are provided by state institutions.

What does the statement of Soros mean? The fact that funding from his foundation will increase many times and, if so far the Soros Foundation in Armenia has been working at the level of some of its agents of influence (in the government or at the level of individual public organizations), it will now have access to direct government administration. And Soros's development and recommendations will be directly implemented in government agencies.

The difference between the current appeal of Soros and his previous activities in Armenia is significant. Under the previous authorities, the Soros Foundation also actively functioned, developed strategic documents, many of which were accepted by government agencies and implemented. But then at least there was a small group of people who resisted. The Soros Foundation had a great influence, but there could be no direct total control. Today, this direct control is quite possible.

First, at least five members of parliament are directly or indirectly funded from the Soros Foundation. Government members are almost 100 percent westernized people. At the moment in Armenia there is no point of support for national forces, even in the ruling party, it is not possible to see. Under the previous regime, there were forces that resisted a destructive alien influence. And there were no parliamentarians directly funded by the Soros Foundation. But now situation changed colossally.

Remarkable that the Open Society Foundation, which is also known as the Soros Foundation has been operating in Armenia since 1997. Since then, the foundation has allocated grants worth more than $48 million to more than 200 organizations for implementing programs mainly aimed at protecting women's rights, preventing family violence, developing a free press, investigative journalism, observing missions, developing civil society institutions, on the solution of other similar important tasks that require prompt solution.

But what the organization of the Open Society Foundation and its office in Armenia is doing in no way contributes to the implementation of the principles declared by the organization.

Organizations and individuals that actively cooperate with the foundation are marked by activities aimed at influencing the internal political processes and the mood of the society.

These organizations are the Asparez Journalists' Club, the Consortium of Informed Citizens, an advisory public organization, the Helsinki Citizens Assembly Vanadzor office, Transparency International anti-corruption center.

During their entire activity, these organizations received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fund and spent millions of dollars not on the implementation of their stated goals, but on conducting propaganda and anti-propaganda in Armenia, on a distorted view of various professional concepts, on the impact on certain public stocks.

The main part of the activities of these organizations was propaganda and anti-propaganda in various foreign policy and domestic policies, and by all means, facilitating the change of power in April-May 2018.

Thus, numerous representatives of these organizations and various individuals funded by the Soros Foundation, after the change of power, took various government positions.

Recently it became known that the Department of Defense Export of the Israeli Ministry of returned to Aeronautics a license to supply unmanned aircraft to Azerbaijan, withdrawn in the fall of 2017 due to a criminal investigation.

This is a company that supplies unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to Azerbaijan.

It is not surprising that Armenia is disappointed with this decision. According to Armenian media, the ban, it turns out, applies only to managers, and not to the company as a whole.

The Armenian diaspora and lobby also raised a noise. Armenian National Committee of the United States stated that Israel is giving this decision a signal to attack Armenian positions with the help of kamikaze drones.

It seems that the Armenian lobby does not understand that the weapon is purchased in order to use it in battle.

Azerbaijan is in a state of war with Armenia, that stations its military units in the occupied Azerbaijani territories. And the only real reason for the Armenians’ discontent in connection with the use of Israeli drones by the Azerbaijani army is their absence in Armenia itself.

Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anna Naghdalyan said at a briefing in Yerevan that Armenia raises this issue both at bilateral meetings and on multilateral platforms. However, Armenia, stating that the arms race in the region is extremely dangerous, recently launched a deal for the purchase of four Su-30SM multi-role fighters from Russia, which the Armenian armed forces will receive in 2020. The planes are sold on credit and at Russian domestic prices.

Colonel in the reserve Shair Ramaldanov noted that Israeli drones were indeed used for the first time in the April battles and showed their reliability in combat conditions.

He underlined that Azerbaijan has always purchased and will buy those weapons that it sees fit, and from those it deems necessary.

Ramaldanov said in geopolitical terms, Azerbaijan has a huge advantage over Armenia.

‘‘Armenia is an occupying country. Even if it is not officially announced, this reality is accepted by all. Everyone accepted the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. In addition, we know that Armenia has never been sovereign. Yerevan always performed the commands of its owners," he stressed.

Moreover, he added that Azerbaijan has recently launched the production of a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), ‘‘the Pegasus 120’’, in cooperation with the Israeli company Aeronautics at the Azad Systems enterprise.

He concluded that it is possible in the future there will be no need to purchase UAVs abroad - Azerbaijan will meet the needs of the army itself and even become an exporter of drones.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the World Bank for 20162017, Azerbaijan today is the largest importer of weapons in the former Soviet Union. Baku purchased weapons for $279 million in 2017, which is by $7 million more than the previous year.

In turn,Armenia receives weapons either on credit or as a‘‘bone for a dog’’ from its owners. That’s why Azerbaijan will always remain a welcome customer for countries producing weapons.