“Builder” on the bones

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is over the moon. He finally visited the new building of the Armenian Embassy in the UK. Yellow journalism is forever, so the room-tour of the building purchased for the hard earned 17.3 million pounds sterling (over $22 million) of proud Armenian taxpayers turned out to be quite elaborate.

He displayed everything: from Soviet-style offices to a bedroom perfect for a daily rent, puzzled embassy staff, etc. Only the shower heads remained undisclosed. But the foremost point is the childish joy of the “Supreme Commander-in-Chief” of Armenia, as if he had come to liberated Hadrut, not to London, as if it was not merely yesterday that he had left Artsakh and its more than 120,000 native people to be tormented, turning over a thousand years old and the only previously uniterrupted page of Armenian history, as if he, and not his “constructive partner” on “eternal peace” Ilham Aliyev, who refused to hold one-on-one talks with him in London, is meeting with the King of England, while Pashinyan himself is taking room-tours and bicycle rides around London.

But after all, Pashinyan could have been invited to Buckingham Palace for a cup of tea, to at least be congratulated on the new London office of a tour agency called “Real Armenia” (aka “Crossroads of Peace”). According to the Prime Minister himself, the embassy is now located “on one of the most politicized streets”. But for some reason, even on such a street, Armenia’s day under its rulers never comes, only intimidation and threats are attached. For example, the issue of settlement of “western” Azerbaijanis in Armenia, increasingly raised by Aliyev, because no one will remind him of the patriacide (not only physical extermination, but also deprivation of the homeland) in Nakhijevan, Northern and then all of Artsakh, the destruction of the oldest Armenian communities in Baku, Sumgait, Shamakhi, and Gandzak.

Though time is revealing new edges of his deficiency, it is not only the time-server Prime Minister who has been in question here. Yet what about Armenia’s Ambassador to Great Britain Varuzhan Nersesyan, an experienced diplomat, who should, firstly, from the altitude of his expertise warn the government against mistakes related to the lack of contextual knowledge and political immaturity, and secondly, under any circumstances ensure the proper welcome of his leadership in the country where he performs his duties? Mr Nersesian, to all appearances, assesses his competences and duties somewhat inferiorly: so far we only see him nodding in tune with the Prime Minister and taking pictures of Vahagn Khachaturyan, the President of Armenia, next to Queen Elizabeth’s coffin in violation of all possible standards and protocols.

Doubtlessly, Nersesyan modestly concealed the fact that the new building had nothing to do with improving relations with the British crown. Having started his work as Ambassador to the UK back in the summer of 2021, he could not have been unaware that the current King of England, while being the heir to the throne, had invited President Armen Sarkissian to his birthday celebration and was his guest upon arrival to Armenia. Mr Ambassador could not also have been unaware of the fact that Sarkissian, during his earlier tenure as Armenia’s Ambassador to the UK, achieved all that without spending a single cent of the state budget on such superficial things, employing his own place as his residence and the Embassy building. Neither could Nersesyan be unaware that the millions spent on the new building would not regain the lost invaluable capital and respect. How many ambassadors do you know whose houses the King of the United Kingdom guested at?

Varuzhan Nersesyan did not prevent the Prime Minister from buying an expensive and worthless toy, and history will blame for this and for the significantly impaired Armenian-British relations neither Pashinyan, nor Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, but professionals like Varuzhan Nersesyan, who deliberately chose to wait on the timeservers instead of serving the state. Meanwhile, the British Embassy in Azerbaijan, depicting Aliyev’s royal welcome, relays an Azerbaijani “Old friends are best friends” proverb. “A new embassy builidng is more joyful than the historic homeland,” echoes the Armenian prime minister, who, to put it mildly, has not lost his taste for life after the surrender of Artsakh. He needs neither old nor new friends – the whole world, including the enemies of the Armenian world, are his friends. Ancient philosophers would have told Pashinyan that this means that he in fact is friend to none, but Antiquity was well before Levon Ter-Petrosyan, so Pashinyan has little interest in it.