Experts: Karabakh aggravation and capture of police building were main 2016 events in Armenia

One of the main events of 2016 in Armenia was the four-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh, which revealed gaps in Armenia's policy and the country's security, believes Ruben Megrabyan, a political scientist and an expert of the Centre for Political and International Studies.

In his opinion, the April aggravation was unprecedented after signing the armistice, and turned into a short-term large-scale war with decisive goals.

"In order to exclude any relapse of the April war in Nagorno-Karabakh, we should revise the foreign policy vector, in particular, our relations with Russia, which has become a threat to Armenia's security by supplying weapons to Azerbaijan," Mr Megrabyan told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Sergey Minasyan, a political scientist and the deputy director of the Caucasus Institute also believes that the Karabakh conflict had affected the political life of the country.

He identified three significant events of 2016.

"This was the April escalation in the conflict zone as such; the July events (he means the capture by the "Sasna Tsrer" group of a police building in Yerevan, – note of the "Caucasian Knot"); and the change of the government. The authorities claim that lessons had been learnt out of them, despite the fact that the opposition and part of the civil society assert the opposite. Whether it is right or not, God forbid, the following force-majeure events will show," Sergey Minasyan told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.