Canada’s foreign minister expressed his joy over the fact that a representative of Canada joined the EU observation mission in Armenia from today. Discussions and agreement about that took place last year. Yerevan and Brussels agreed to involve Canada. Canadian Foreign Minister says: “Returning to (Canada) after my visit (to Armenia) last year, a key priority was to explore ways to ensure stability and security in the South Caucasus, including respect for Armenia’s territorial integrity.”
And the EU observation mission in Armenia made a remarkable note in this regard. “We are happy to welcome the first Canadian expert Alexander Grushevsky to EUMA. Canada is the first third country to support the EU mission in Armenia.” Worthy of attention is the wording: “Canada is the first third country”. Does this mean that there are other “third countries” that either themselves applied to the European Union and Armenia to join the observation mission, or the European Union and Armenia applied to join? At least the wording “first third country” is not exactly like that, otherwise it would just be a greeting and that’s it.
There is no doubt that the involvement of Canada is a political act, because the European Union hardly needs a mere human number. At the same time, it is difficult to imagine that the involvement of Canada strengthens the mission politically. To put it mildly, it is difficult to imagine that Canada, for example, has more weight than France, which initiates and leads the EU mission in Armenia, or Germany, which is the other key participant. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that Canada’s involvement has the goal of simply changing the format of the observation mission, for now, in the sense of political content and entourage. The European mission is actually becoming more than European. A few days ago, the spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Zakharova, announced that the EU observation mission is actually a NATO mission.
Canada’s involvement at least becomes an argument in favor of that assessment. A question arises as to what the possible change in the political format and context of the mission is talking about, and what kind of attitude the neighboring Iran, for example, will have towards it. Despite apparently expressing their opposition, Iran and Russia will not be against it on a practical level, if the observation civil initiative, which actually assumes NATO logic, “enters” more responsibility for stability on the border of Armenia, because Moscow and Tehran may consider that it is NATO that has interest in exerting pressure on them through destabilization. In other words, they are essentially talking about it in plain text.
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