The entire state and military machine in the Russian Federation is corrupt from top to bottom and this is no secret. At one time, in the early 1990s, it was due to the corruption of the Russian government and army that the Armenian lobby managed to force the Russian military machine to fight in its own interests in Azerbaijani Karabakh and Georgian Abkhazia. As a result, Armenian nationalists gained separatist territories, where they became in complete control.

However, if during the Armenian-separatist "expansion" Russian corruption played into its hands, in the face of defeats and feverish attempts to maintain at least "scraps" of separatist projects, the total corruption of the Russian military is costing the Armenian lobby "nothing".

The Armenian newspaper Hraparak recently published the following information:

"Sources in Karabakh report that the peacekeepers have started charging about $10,000 for each truckload of food or other goods instead of the previous $1,000-2,000. Recently they have been violating agreements with the Armenian government. The peacekeepers are busy making money off the Karabakh people.

The Russian peacekeepers, in return for their 'protection of Armenians from 'genocide', are engaging in banal extortion, taking advantage of the fact that Karabakh Armenians and 'Artsakh' separatists have nowhere else to go.

Of course, the Karabakh Armenians could have negotiated the supply of food and basic goods directly with their legitimate state, Azerbaijan, without any bribes or extortion. In this case, the food supply would not have been via the Lachin road, but via other routes on Azerbaijani territory outside the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeepers. Azerbaijan considers the Karabakh Armenians to be its full-fledged citizens and there would certainly be no problems with supplying them.

However, the separatists themselves are cutting off such an opportunity " at the very root". Armenians in Karabakh are already being arrested and interrogated (and possibly tortured) by the separatist illegal 'authorities', accused of 'espionage' simply for trying to contact the Azerbaijani authorities on social media to obtain Azerbaijani citizenship. Although such interest by Karabakh Armenians is quite reasonable and logical. After all, after November 2024, when the Russian 'peacekeepers' leave Azerbaijani territory, the question of citizenship will also arise for Karabakh Armenians. However, the separatists are deliberately whipping up separatist psychosis and the mood of a 'besieged siege fortress' among Karabakh Armenians.

Such sentiments only benefit the corrupt leadership of the Russian 'peacekeepers'. There is no doubt that the closer it gets to November 2024, the higher the "rates" of extortion for food trucks escorted by the "peacekeepers" into Karabakh will increase.

And then the "peacekeepers" rub their hands together and hope to make some more money from "saving Armenians from the "genocide" - they will accompany the removal of Karabakh Armenian families to Armenia for money, not forgetting to share it with the local separatists.  After all, the separatists will not allow ordinary Karabakh Armenians to obtain Azerbaijani citizenship. It becomes very profitable to "save" them - to take them to Armenia. And in order not to spare the Karabakh Armenians money for "salvation", in agreement with the separatists and with their participation, they will arrange regular provocations with violence or even murder of civilians in Karabakh.

Reasonable Karabakh Armenians should have realized long ago that the separatists and "peacekeepers" deliberately made hostages of them, deliberately bringing the situation to a deadlock in order to profit from them.

George Kvinitadze