Forecast: European activation will not bring special changes in  post-war realities 

ArmInfoThe visit and goals of the President of the European Council Charles Michel to Yerevan should be considered along with the goals of his meetings with the  leaderships of the other countries participating in the Eastern  Partnership program. A similar opinion was expressed to ArmInfo by  the editor-in-chief of the Russia in Global Affairs magazine,  scientific director of the Valdai discussion club Fyodor Lukyanov.

"The matter concerns meetings with the leaderships of Armenia,   Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Moldova. Today the European Union   is trying to activate the Eastern Partnership, and, both the results  of the 44-day war in Karabakh and the position of Belarus in favor of  withdrawing from this program play a certain role in those attempts.   All these realities weaken the implementation of the EaP as a whole,  and Brussels, as expected, strives not to lose completely the levers  of influence, "he stressed.  President of the European Council  Charles Michel, who was in Yerevan on July 16-17, at a joint briefing  with Nikol Pashinyan, voiced the EU's desire to "be involved in the  region." "The EU wants to become a loyal and active partner of  Armenia in ensuring its well-being, stability and security. I am  sending you a very strong message - we are by your side. I reaffirm  the EU's intention to provide an unprecedented EUR 2.6 billion  financial package to help address Armenia's priorities", Michel  noted. 

According to the analyst, seeing and realizing all these realities  perfectly well, the EU initiated a new mission in the EaP countries  by activating this program in order to increase its own involvement  in their politics. And Armenia in this sense is not an exception, in  his opinion. The visit of the head of the European Council to  Yerevan, according to Lukyanov, is an inseparable part of this  mission.

Noting that all this European activity is taking place in the zone of  Russian influence, the analyst stressed that in terms of, for  example, the same Armenia, Russia also has a fairly active  involvement. First of all, in matters of ensuring the security of the  republic, in which Yerevan by now has no other alternative but  Moscow. Lukyanov backed up his assertion by recalling the passive  behavior of the collective West represented by the OSCE Minsk Group  during the last year's war in Karabakh.  "In any case, when analyzing  the possible prospects for the EU's activation, first of all it is  necessary to proceed from the realities. The realities are in the  presence of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh and Russian military in  Armenia. The number of which, by the way, is constantly increasing.   In this light, I do not think the EU's activation of the Eastern  Partnership program and even the parallel activation of the US in the  post-Soviet space, in general, will make significant changes in these  realities, "the Russian analyst summed up. 

The European Union intends to allocate more than 2.6 billion euros to  Armenia in the next 5 years for five key programs, including the  development of the Syunik region. The document was presented and  approved on July 2 in Brussels, it specifies the initiatives that the  European Commission intends to implement by 2025 in the member  countries of the Eastern Partnership.