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 fabricated charges’ and ‘Pashinyan calls for the removal of Karekin II, the Catholicos or supreme leader of the Armenian church.’ Some extremist clergy in the Armenian Apostolic Church, led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, a prominent cleric in the Armenian Apostolic Church, have been charged for preparing a coup with Russia’s assistance to overthrow the democratically elected and legitimate government headed by Pashinyan and return to power the Armenian National Assembly uniting corrupt pro-Russian clans that ruined Armenia.

Archbishop Galstanyan issued an ultimatum for Pashinyan to resign and when he did not, he met with the pro-Russian former Presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan. The Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Karekin II, has also convened meetings with former pro-Russian Presidents of Armenia, Ter-Petrosyan, Kocharyan, and Sargsyan, as well as former separatist  leaders of Karabakh, Arkhady Ghukasyan and Bako Sahakyan.

Although there is separation of Church and state in Armenia, the Armenian Apostolic Church regularly interferes in politics as a radical ally of the pro-Russian, anti-Pashinyan opposition. Why? Because the Armenian Apostolic Church is vehemently hostile to the peace agreement and supporter of the old regime that kept Armenia as a corrupt Russian puppet state.

Kruger describes Azerbaijan and Türkiye as ‘Armenia’s enemies’ which is not true. Azerbaijan returned land in two short wars in 2020 and 2023 that were both internationally recognised as its sovereign territory. No international organisation or human rights organisation has accused Azerbaijan of deporting Armenians from those territories.

Extremists in the Armenian Apostolic Church and the former pro-Russian rulers of Armenia have attempted to overthrow Prime Minister Pashinyan’s government, accusing him of ‘treason’ and ‘betrayal’ of Armenians in ‘Artsakh’, the name they ascribe to Karabakh. This ignores the fact the United Nations (UN), Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other international organisations have stated on countless occasions that Karabakh is Azerbaijani sovereign territory.

Azerbaijan has doggedly pursued the path of peace and a peace agreement with Armenia that would recognise Soviet republican boundaries as international borders – as was agreed in the 21 December 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration and Protocol. Prime Minister Pashinyan has been confronted by extremist clergy from the Armenian Apostolic Church who have opposed the path of peace with Azerbaijan in pursuit of the nationalist dream of a Greater Armenia. Prime Minister Pashinyanis opposed by an extremist wing of the pro-Russian Armenian Apostolic Church that fans nationalism and chauvinism towards minorities.

The Reform Party is the successor to the Brexit Party and staunch supporter of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union.  The Reform Party opposes Prime Minister Pashinyan’s programme of European integration, seemingly preferring that Armenia remain within Russia’s sphere of influence. Its therefore no surprise the Reform Party has a similar approach to viewing Ukraine as part of Russia.

As the USSR disintegrated in 1991, only two of the fifteen Soviet republics – Russia and Armenia – refused to accept their inherited borders and supported expansionist claims towards their neighbours. Armenian nationalists defeated Azerbaijan in the 1988-1992 First Karabakh War and occupied a fifth of Azerbaijan. Russia backed Armenia’s expansionism and fomented conflicts in Georgia and Moldova and installed its so-called ‘peacekeeping’ troops. In 2014 and 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea and four Ukrainian regions in a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and 1.2 million Russian lives. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been indicted as a war criminal by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The Armenian Apostolic Church has centuries-old close ties to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Karekin II, ‘is considered one of the last remnants of the former regime —by association, links with Russia. In late 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Karekin II a medal of honour for developing cultural relations between the two countries.’

Both Churches are supporters of imperial nationalism and irridentism towards their neighbours. The Armenian Apostolic Church supports the nationalist dream of a ‘Greater Armenia’ that lays territorial claims towards western Azerbaijan and eastern Türkiye. The Russian Orthodox declares the so-called ‘special military operation,’ the Kremlin’s official name for its full-scale war against Ukraine, to be a ‘Holy War’ to ‘liberate’ ‘Russian’ lands in Ukraine. In March of last year the Russian Orthodox Church stated ‘the special military operation is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people, defending the unified spiritual space of Holy Rus’, fulfil the mission of the “Restrainer,” [Katechon] protecting the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West, which has fallen into Satanism.’

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is attempting to ending decades of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan that will bring peace to the South Caucasus as well as integrating his country Armenia with Europe. These two objectives are both worthy of British and European support.