Italy is a significant contributor to the U.N. mission known as UNIFIL.
In a phone conversation with Netanyahu, Meloni also called for the “full implementation” of the UN’s Security Council Resolution 1701 on Lebanon and stressed the urgent need for a de-escalation of conflict in the region, her office said.
Well, that’s just specifics of Armenian politics as an illustration. People tend to invent various mechanisms more complex that reality to avoid feeling powerless.
I basically meant that, a bit like many other ex-Soviet states, Armenia is in practice oligarch-ruled and those oligarchs are not nice people.
The specific knowledge is spread thinly on the Web, I’ve basically listed Gagik Tsarukyan (aka Dodi Gago, oligarch), Khachatur Sukiasyan (aka Grzo, oligarch) and Robert Kocharyan (former president and oligarch) ; the parliament shooting in 1999 - that’s in Wikipedia, people I’ve called better than the rest are Vazgen Sargsyan (PM, former defense minister) and Karen Demirchyan (parliament speaker, also before USSR breakup he was more or less the leader of the Armenian SSR), and I’ve made a mistake, Kocharyan already was president then.
Technically before 2018 Kocharyan’s was the dominant faction, Grzo’s was somewhat suppressed, and Dodi Gago was not too high, but also not harmed. Now Grzo’s faction is dominant, Kocharyan’s is the “opposition” (the opposition before 2018 was real, after 2018 it first lost publicity and relevance, and now it’s kinda marginal), and Dodi Gago is still kinda neutral with his huge Christ Statue.
One can say that Kocharyan is kinda friendly to Russia and Grzo is kinda friendly to Turkey, but that’s mostly due to their businesses.
So despite the impression (that many Armenians share) of some “revolution” happening in 2018, this is not true (despite there being some initial improvements) and thankfully (I hope it’s not too late) people by now generally understand that the current ruling party cannot be allowed to keep power after 2026. Even the reason they won elections in 2021 was the fearmongering that Kocharyan will make a comeback.
So - if Armenia doesn’t just get wiped off the map before it, I think the ruling party will either openly steal the election or lose power, and there’s that third variant of them threatening the general population with Azeri invasion if they lose, which doesn’t seem so fantastic considering that the Azeri invasion of Artsakh in 2023 happened after they lost power there.