Friday, February 8 2019 17:12

ArmInfo.Sponsors and initiators of the information war unfolding in the Armenian society are deliberately trying to strike at the unity and trust of citizens towards each other and the state, Director of the Ashkharh Center for  Strategic Studies (Stepanakert), military analyst Hrachya Arzumanyan  expressed the opinion to ArmInfo.

"This mutual trust was most vividly manifested in April-May last year  in the days of the velvet revolution." This very important factor and  its positive consequences, as a whole, are not realized by society,  which is normal, by the way. Meanwhile, this very society relying on  mutual trust, takes control of the state and statehood. It is this  kind of society that does not allow the authorities to transform  themselves into a handful of people pursuing the selfish goals of  gaining revenues from state functions and structures, "he stressed.

With the change of power, a real information war has unfolded in  Armenian media and social networks with the participation of  supporters of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, supporters of the  former ruling Republican Party, and supporters of former President  Robert Kocharyan. Former members of the RPA and persons affiliated  with Kocharyan periodically acquire TV channels, newspapers, create  new Internet resources, whose work focuses solely on criticism of the  current government. In social networks, there are numerous fake  accounts working on various politicians, as a rule, spreading also  disinformation. Hundreds of journalists and dozens of information  resources generate and spread fake news.

According to the analyst, it was in the days of the "velvet  revolution" that the Armenian society demonstrated the ability of  cohesion, mutual trust towards any Armenian, and not just their own  family or clan. It was then that the awareness of one's own power,  the ability to build a new, different Armenia, based on mutual trust  of citizens and the state was manifested. Extremely limited number of  societies have such trust.  Acknowledging the mistakes made by the  new Armenian authorities, Arzumanyan expressed the hope that many of  them are the result of inexperience. And, accordingly, will be  eliminated, including through the dismissal of persons who make these  mistakes. He is also confident that otherwise it will be the  preservation of mutual trust in society that will allow for a new  change of power, however, no longer in revolutionary, but in milder  ways.  The analyst is convinced that only a society based on such  values will allow Armenia to develop at a rapid pace and achieve  qualitatively new results in a limited period of time. In this light,  maintaining a sense of trust in society, not only in conditions of  war, but also in conditions of peace, in his opinion, is an extremely  important condition for building a truly new Armenian statehood.