Konstantin Zatulin: Entire meeting between Western leaders and  Pashinyan based solely on desire to support him in fight to separate  Armenia from Russia

ArmInfo. French President Emmanuel Macron, who encourages Armenia to reject Russia's "imperial" patronage, is himself acting like an heir to his country's imperial past, wanting to "teach everyone." This opinion was expressed in a conversation  with RTVI by Konstantin Zatulin, First Deputy Chairman of the State  Duma Committee on CIS Affairs. The article was posted on the official  website of the "Lazarev Club."

"There was a time when France considered itself an empire, and that  time is long gone." "The desire to teach, mentor, and dominate  everyone, at least in the French president, who is leaving office  next year, has indeed remained," he stated. The parliamentarian  dismissed Macron's visit to Yerevan for the European Political  Society summit and the first Armenia-EU summit as a "joke."

"He sang a Charles Aznavour song accompanied by the drums played by  [Armenian Prime Minister] Nikol Pashinyan, and he patted dogs on the  shoulders during a jog in Yerevan. In fact, jogging in public is  becoming Macron's main means of impressing foreign capitals," Zatulin  said.

In his speeches at the summit and the Yerevan Dialogue forum, the  French leader "spoke a lot," the parliamentarian continued. He  believes Macron's main desire was "to prove that Armenia no longer  needs to cooperate with Russia, because a true Europe has taken  Russia's place, represented by him and his EU partners."

"They welcome, for example, the development of trade between  Azerbaijan and Yerevan and talk about it as something they are ready  to mediate and assist, yet no one is sending a single kilogram of  French goods along these routes," the first deputy head of the Duma  committee noted.

He also mentioned that European leaders "with great pleasure" signed  an agreement with Pashinyan's government to decommission the Armenian  Nuclear Power Plant. This refers to the Metsamor (Armenian) Nuclear  Power Plant, which was built during the Soviet era and mothballed  after the 1998 Spitak earthquake. In 1995, one of the plant's two  power units was restarted. It remains the only operating nuclear  power plant in the South Caucasus, generating an average of 30-40% of  the country's electricity. The plant's lifespan is being extended  thanks to cooperation with Rusatom Service. According to Zatulin,  instead of acknowledging the productivity of the Armenian Nuclear  Power Plant, which, with its single power unit, meets a third of the  country's needs, Western representatives are "telling the Armenian  people tall tales."

The deputy recalled that US Vice President J.D. Vance, during his  February visit to Yerevan, promised the supply of small modular  reactors worth "a billion dollars." However, so far these reactors  exist only on paper; "there are still no tests, no prototypes," he  emphasized.

"It's certainly possible to pull the wool over people's eyes like  this. Meanwhile, neither the coveted visa- free regime we dreamed of,  nor accession to the European Union (Pashinyan pushed a law on this  through parliament in March 2025)-none of that exists. Instead, there  are words, words, words, hugs, kisses, demonstrations of solidarity,  the allocation of money for cookies in the fight against Russia's  hybrid threats, and so on and so forth," Zatulin pointed out. He also  noted that the topics of refugees from Nagorno- Karabakh or the  political repression of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Armenia were  not raised during the European Summit in Yerevan. The forum  participants simply "didn't notice" this, said the RTVI source.

"In fact, nothing was said about Armenia's security or about  resolving Armenia's problems related to its failure in domestic and  foreign policy, the loss of historical lands in Nagorno-Karabakh,  from which the entire population was forced to flee. But Mr. Macron,  as a distinguished expert in modern history, began to discuss  Russia's failure to provide assistance to Armenia. "Has France ever  provided any assistance to Armenia in any military situation, either  now or 100 years ago?" Zatulin asked.

He concluded that the entire meeting between Western leaders and  Pashinyan was driven solely by a desire to support him in his fight  to break Armenia away from Russia, and, at the same time, to support  him ahead of the parliamentary elections on June 7.

"That's all. The visitors themselves, at least some of them, decided  to quickly move from Yerevan to Baku, where they're saying the same  old things, only this time about Azerbaijan," Konstantin Zatulin  concluded.