What Made Russia Indifferent to the Revolution in Armenia

Russia’s reaction to the dramatic collapse of the firmly entrenched regime in Armenia, which is one of its few formal and real allies, was subtle and demonstratively neutral. Contact with the opposition was minimal, but the idiosyncratic counter-revolutionary stance was abandoned. This unusual self-restraint may be the result of Russia’s entrapment in Syria, and it may also be due to a mistake caused by the overload of rigidly centralized leadership.