Danny Kruger, a Member of Parliament (MP) from the pro-Russian populist nationalist Reform Party, wrote in a recent commentary in defence of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the dominant confession in Armenia. In November former leader of the Reform Party in Wales Nathan Gill was sentenced to 10.5 years for taking bribes from Russia for pro-Russian statements while he was a Member of the European Parliament.

Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform Party, has a long history of supporting pro-Russian positions on Ukraine and Crimea. Farage has used language strangely similar to the far-left former leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn in blaming NATO and the EU enlargement for ‘provoking’ war with Russia. Ukraine has never been invited to join NATO and only became a candidate member of the EU after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

It is therefore not surprising the Reform Party is supporting the pro-Russian opposition in Armenia which had been in power until the 2018 popular ‘velvet revolution’ and transformed the country into the Kremlin’s corrupt offshore puppet state. Pashinyan is seeking to re-build Armenia’s democracy and integrate into Europe by moving away from Russia, a step we should be applauding. 

Prime Minister Pashinyan has also strongly backed steps to end the most intractable conflict in the former USSR by negotiating a peace agreement and normalisation of relations with Armenia’s neighbours – Azerbaijan and Türkiye. Again, these are steps we should be applauding. 

Kruger claimed that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan ‘has launched a bitter assault on the Armenian Apostolic Church’ which is ‘being treated as if it were the political opposition.

Kruger writes that ‘Several Armenian bishops have been arrested on........

© Eurasia Review