YEREVAN. – Changes in Russia might somewhat affect Armenia’s foreign political developments, but they will not be crucial, Armenian opposition ARF Dashnaktsutyun Party’s Parliamentary Faction leader Vahan Hovhannisyan said, during a press conference on Thursday, commenting on the decision of transferring Russian presidency from Dmitry Medvedev to Vladimir Putin.    

“Russian opposition circles consider what took place to be impermissible, since power is transferred from the president to the former president, and public opinion receded into the background. To be honest, such thing happened in Armenia, too,” Vahan Hovhannisyan noted, adding : “I think that, being presidents of the Russian Federation, neither Medvedev nor Putin can cause substantial change in Armenia’s domestic politics. After all, our aspiration is to elect our own president by ourselves, and without intervention by others.”   

According to Hovhannisyan, however, certain nuances could change in foreign policy. “It is apparent that the West sees Putin as a tougher figure. But I do not thing that the changes would be dramatic or crucial,” Vahan Hovhannisyan concluded.