In an interview with RBK TV, second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan stated that the protests held in Armenia two years ago and the demonstrations that began in Belarus in August of this year have many things in common.

Listing the differences, Kocharyan drew attention to the fact that the positions of European countries were different in the cases of Armenia and Belarus.

“The attitude of the West towards Belarus was totally different from the West’s attitude towards Armenia. Armenia’s authorities were objectively much more tolerant towards dissidence, the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) and the President were actively collaborating with Western countries, and Armenia didn’t have political prisoners, reporters weren’t beaten and people didn’t mysteriously disappear. Moreover, the RPA was a member of the European People’s Party and was actively collaborating with the institutions for interparty cooperation,” Kocharyan said, adding that the relations with Europe changed sharply after the protests that took place in April 2018.

According to Kocharyan, many revolutions that have taken place in the territory of the former USSR, including the Revolution of Roses in Georgia in 2003, the Velvet Revolution in Armenia in 2018 and the attempted revolution in Belarus, are similar in terms of the technologies that have been used, but the main parameters vary in each country.