The year 2025 was no exception to the protracted chronicle of the Third Republic’s self-destruction. It hardly makes sense to sum up some political results in a country where everything political has been destroyed at its core. And this is the first reality that we urgently need to accept in 2026: we have failed to build a state, we have no political parties and no political programs, there is no parliamentarism, there is no real political competition, while the institution of elections is devoid of any political content. To our collective shame, today’s Armenia is a feudal-clan formation, where voters are needed only to legitimise the failures of other vassals. In such circumstances, elections by their very nature cannot become a channel of political change.
Nevertheless, let us summarise the year-end realities:
- ● the enemy is still standing and strengthening within Armenia;
- ● the Turkish satrap is preparing to surrender new territories of the ‘Real Armenia’ to the enemy;
- ● Artsakh is consigned to oblivion, the Armenian government has announced the closure of the issue, intends to remove the reference to it from the Constitution and has initiated the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group;
- ● 23 Armenian prisoners continue to suffer in the Azerbaijani prison without any protection from the Armenian state;
- ● The Armenians of Artsakh still serve as scapegoats and are still mostly homeless;
- ● The Armenians of Spyurk (foreign communities) continue to legitimise Pashinyan’s collaborationist rule with their tacit acceptance and connivance;
- ● One of the main achievements of the Armenian world, the Section 907of the US Freedom Support Act 1992, is at risk of disappearing;
- ● Armenia is increasingly driven into international debts and all-round dependence on Turkey and Azerbaijan;
- ● and the residents of the piece left from Armenia are fed illusions of peace with Azerbaijan, festivals and New Year’s window displays. No one offers any future, security, dignity, statehood and legality to the Armenian people, even on the festive menu.
So, in order to preserve his pathetic power, Pashinyan fulfils all the whims of the Azerbaijani mini-sultan, builds a ‘Real Armenia’, forcing children to draw the ‘right’ mountains, writes songs about the need to forget the ‘homeland’ for the sake of the ‘state’ and desecrates the walls of the Armenian temples – to the applause of his slaves shouting his name. The disparate and disconnected Armenian world only sometimes lazily comments about this on social media or issues angry statements. At the same time, even among the public defenders of the Armenian Apostolic Church there are passive collaborators who are ‘not concerned with politics’.
Everyone – critics, supporters, and passive observers – casually play their roles, creating a tacit consensus: ‘Pashinyan is for a long time, so we need to stake out our place in this system’. Well, if he really is for a long time, then Armenia certainly is not.
Therefore, the second truth that the Armenian world must surely and urgently realise is that despair and hopelessness are being imposed on us so much, just so that we do not notice the way out. Tiny Armenia and a micro-region called the ‘South Caucasus’ are being imposed on us, instilling fear in us by colossi with feet of clay – Turkey and Azerbaijan. We need to look at our neighbours without a magnifying glass in order to see the world beyond the artificial borders of the ‘Real Armenia’.
In this big world, in 2026, we will see clearer outlines of the fundamental shifts in the global world order that have taken place in recent years. Those, who will draw new maps and routes, will not suffer from the inferiority complexes of the Turkish governor and will obviously not build a new world, based on how Turkey and Azerbaijan dream of seeing it. The problem is different: our enemies have a vision of the region that they can offer to new architects, while the Armenian world is just passively waiting and hoping that Armenians will somehow survive as a national and cultural autonomy in this new global architecture.
Our future will remain a mystery to us and a whim of ‘fate’ until we form a national aristocracy – a group of people capable of articulating national interests by putting them above private ones. From now on, its absence threatens us not only with the yearly extension of the list of sad realities, but that soon there will be no political unit left on the map, for which it will be possible to sum up results – even sad ones. By preserving and reproducing the current system (whether represented by four former and current leaders or the ‘new opposition’), the Armenian world confesses to the world in its failure and unwillingness to build a meaningful state.
If we are unable to take responsibility for our own future and are ready to rely on Azerbaijan’s gestures of ‘goodwill’, it is natural that global players will not see us as potential partners in establishing a new order. However, it is necessary to survive until the new order. As always, it will be built through storms and upheavals. The Turkish satrap is trying to convince us that these storms may be avoided, if we give everything that they could carry in advance. The Armenian flag will inevitably be included in this list.
However, the third truth is that storms are inevitable, no one will turn them in the other direction, and when they come, we will be alone facing them. Only a true national aristocracy is capable to accept this truth and fight the storm, to prove that we have earned our place in the sun and that it is better not to provoke us next time.
The ‘international partners’, to whom we so zealously prove our peacefulness and love for our neighbours, will only urge those storms ‘to sit down with us at the negotiating table’, respect our territorial integrity and respect the rights of the civilian population. We heard all this during ethnic cleansings in Artsakh, and we are hearing it now, when Armenian prisoners are being tortured in Baku and condemned to certain death. If the powers-that-be are unwilling to force Azerbaijan to solve such a simple humanitarian matter, what kind of support can we expect when Azerbaijan begins annexing Syunik or commits another act of terror against border villages? If we leave such an opportunity to the enemy, then the ‘international community’ will soon even get tired of issuing statements and wasting paper for us.
The big world out there is not hostile towards us and does not plot against us. It is simply indifferent to us because we did not remind it that we are its integral part, and not a courtyard and a motel for the Turkish world. Until we have declared ourselves as a global nation (and a nation in general), until we have demonstrated to the powers-that-be that our support and contribution cannot be perceived in isolation from Armenian interests, that we are no longer content with handouts, that we have our own ambitions. It is no wonder that they need us no more than we need ourselves.
Therefore, starting in 2026, the future Armenian aristocracy faces the same task, but in different variations: from the minimum scope to the maximum. First of all, Armenia and the Armenian world must accumulate such potential that they will be able to force the world to take into account its interests and force Azerbaijan to do so too. In a slightly more optimistic variation, or over time, the international partners themselves will be motivated to restrain our enemies – without our persistent requests. A more difficult but feasible task is to force the enemy to peace and respect without resorting to intermediaries. Finally, the foremost objective is to strengthen ourselves so far that fatal situations do not arise – to divert potential storms back to their source.
To live to see this glorious day, we need to stop hiding in cosy apartments and cafes from Yerevan to Glendale and from Rostov to Sydney, take responsibility for passing on the millennial heritage of our ancestors to our descendants, put our heads and hearts in order and get rid of illusions.
No miracle will happen in ‘elections’.
Helplessness is self-imposed on us, it is artificial.
We are alone facing the upcoming storms, but we can face them together.
We cannot wait out the storm. We may not survive.
We cannot wait out Turkish satraps, too.
