Armenia could become a country that serves as a base for Russia for the development of certain directions, just like it was during the Soviet era. This is what President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian said in an interview with the Argumenty i Fakty newspaper.

Asked how he would assess the level of economic cooperation with Russia, taking into consideration the fact that the volume of reciprocal trade dropped by 8% (only USD 2,000,000,000) in 2020, Sarkissian said the following: “This concerns the government. I can talk about the trends and strategies, and the strategy is simple — Armenia could become a country that serves as a base for Russia for the development of certain directions, just like it was in the Soviet era. Armenia has the opportunity to engage people and know-hows from the United States, other countries and the West and become a country with new technologies. Is this good for Russia? Yes, it is simply excellent.

My dream is to see Armenia become a hai-tech (high-tech) country. In Armenian, “hai” means “Armenian”. We Armenians refer to our country as Haiastan, that is, the land of Armenians. So, my dream is to see Armenia have hai-tech, that is, Armenian technologies. My dream is also to be proudly able to sell or share anything made in my small country, including with the Russian Federation, and it needs to be hai-tech. An example of hai-tech is producing brandy from the same type of grapes — it is more difficult than preparing grape juice, but the price is incomparably higher. The same goes for programming, artificial intelligence, biotechnologies, vaccines, healthcare, etc.”