Maya Sandu is not Nikol Pashinyan, she is an untainted, solid and ideological woman who really enjoys authority in Brussels. Armen Ashotyan, vice-president of RPA, wrote about this.
"Moldovan referendum and presidential elections understandably became the topic of Armenian discussions as well. However, I have the impression that in that discourse, not the observations from the Armenian tower itself, but simply the clichés dictated by the geopolitical taste, became dominant again. The pro-Western Armenians follow the line of Euronews and CNN, and the pro-Russians are in the Solovyov-Kiselyov ideological propaganda circles.
Let's try to understand, based on the Armenian agenda itself, what lessons can be learned from the developments in Moldova.
First of all, it should be emphasized that Maya Sandu is not Nikol Pashinyan and under no circumstances. I know him personally from the time when he was Minister of Internal Affairs, and then during the joint work in the EPP. Maya is an untainted, solid and ideological woman who has "isms", is not mired in corruption scandals and really enjoys authority in Brussels. He has no physical or human resemblance to Nicole.
Unlike Armenia, which Pashinyan gradually dragged into the geopolitical struggle from 2018 as another theater, Moldova has been like that since the early 90s and has not always positive, but experience and "traditions" of acting in such a capacity.
Of all the post-Soviet states with a vision of European integration, Moldova has the most realistic chances of making it all the way through, thanks to its more compact size, Romania's lobbying, and its geographic location. Although European aid to Moldova, unlike Armenia, is real and tangible, both financially and politically, the population of the country itself voted against the referendum.
Back in 2013, like Georgia, Moldova signed the Association Agreement with the EU, and in 2014 it received a visa-free regime. Nevertheless, the results of the Euro-referendum were disappointing even for Western centers.
Being one of the points of conflict between Russia and the West and having the Transnistria conflict, Sandu, unlike Nikol, did not declare: "Let's give Transnistria, let's live in peace", and fundamentally promoted his own interests in this matter. He did not say that this issue is "a rope around the neck of Moldova", that it "impedes sovereignty". Moldova has not given up its territories, although it understands that the existence of these problems is a lever for Moscow on the one hand, and on the other hand, it prevents the country from faster integration into NATO and the EU.
The "cover" of Moldova's European integration is Romania, and that path is realistic both geographically and culturally. In contrast to Armenia, which is being persuaded to lean towards Brussels, but is actually being handed over to Erdogan.
Nikol regularly sees "Moscow's hand" everywhere and in everything, trying to connect internal political uprisings with the Kremlin. The elections in Moldova showed that when Moscow is really interested in domestic political developments, it acts quite effectively and multi-frontally. This circumstance, by the way, concerns the advocates of the thesis that "the opposition is pro-Russian" or "Moscow is not keeping Nikol".
The biggest problem of Moldova is not the victory of one or the other wing, but the fact of being a polarized society and a divided state. This same disease was also brought to Armenia in 2018 and became chronic and worsened.
The trajectories of all countries in the area of the Eastern Partnership show that the foreign policy conducted by Serzh Sargsyan was the only correct way that allowed us, on the one hand, to protect our national interests, and on the other hand, not to suffer the fate of countries with territorial losses or become like the Lukashenko-Aliev couple.
And as a result of Pashinyan's games, Armenia both lost parts of our Motherland and is rapidly becoming a dictator. Indeed, it is an unprecedented "and-and"..." he wrote.
