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On October 21, 2018 a Russian Vestnik Kavkaza (“Вестник Кавказа”) online media outlet published an article by columnist Mamikon Babayan titled “Kocharyan challenges Pashinyan”(“Кочарян бросает вызов Пашиняну”). Hraparak daily republished this article but with a different headline: “If Pashinyan fails the Karabakh issue, Kocharyan will send him to an everlasting abyss.Vestnik Kavkaza” without even mentioning the author’s name.
The Hraparak daily writes: “….Pashinyan has one major problem: the settlement of Karabakh Issue. If Pashinyan fails to solve this issue, Kocharyan will send him to the eternal political oblivion and nonexistance.”
However, the author of the article has not written anything like that.
This is what he actually wrote: “Now it is vital for Pashinyan to prevent crisis in relations with Moscow and escalation in the Karabakh conflict, because only in case of Prime Ministers’ possible failure in the Karabakh issue can Kocharyan push Pashinyan into a political oblivion.” (“Поэтому сейчас Пашиняну жизненно важно не допустить кризиса в отношениях с Москвой и эскалации карабахского конфликта, ведь только через возможный провал “необстрелянного” премьера в Карабахе Кочарян сможет столкнуть Пашиняна в политическое небытие.”)
In fact, Hraparak distorted Mamikon Babayan’s thoughts in “Vestnik Kavkaza”. Babayan noted that Kocharyan will have the opportunity to remove Pashinyan from politics if under the current prime minister a crisis in Armenian-Russian relations emerges or in case of an escalation of the conflict (probably the author refers to a large-scale war in Artsakh), not in case of Pashinyan’s failure to “solve” the Karabakh conflict.
It should be also noted that Vestnik Kavkaza is famous for being a pro-Azerbaijani website which is mainly engaged in anti-Armenian propaganda for Russian-speaking residents of South Caucasus. Its articles about Armenia are mostly of critical nature.
Hovhannes Nazaretyan
