Views from Moscow: Collective force of Armenians worldwide is indisputable: the question is where the spurtled energy will go

The April war was quite a real attempt of Azerbaijan to resolve the Karabakh conflict by using force. This attempt resulted in significant losses for the Armenian side and gave an emotional punch to the society, Andrey Areshev, expert at the Center for Central Asian, Caucasian and Volga-Ural  Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Oriental Studies, says in an interview with ArmInfo.      

"In Armenia they talk of certain changes in the public sentiments, critical revision of the values proposed to the society by the authorities. Actually, here Armenia does not differ from the unbridled propaganda of pseudo-values of the consumer society in post-Soviet countries, including Russia. Along with this, business is intensively developing in Armenia at public expense. All this runs counter to the image of an ordinary worker or a serviceman, who defends the positions at the expense of his own life," he says. 
The expert recalls that most of the soldiers on the frontline are from poor families, and notes that the authorities needed hundreds of victims to realize the simple truth - security is the most important thing and those who ensure it are irreplaceable and respectable people.     

Areshev points out that at the moment the NKR Defense Army demonstrates to the adversary that the latter's attempts to resolve the Karabakh problem in a military way are doomed to failure. Nevertheless, he thinks that Baku's April 2 attempt revealed the flaws in the military construction that reflect the hard situation in Armenia's public administration and economy. 

"Certainly, foreign communities will keep providing support. Certainly, no one doubts the collective force of the Armenians worldwide, however, the question is how and where the spurtled energy will be directed.  Armenia has no future without cardinal changes in economy, politics, military construction. Actually, the society has given a carte blanche to the authorities for any actions that cardinally change the authorities' attitude to the citizens. The authorities cannot but understand that the only guarantor of the country's functioning is the society, not the corrupt officials or oligarchs," Areshev says.