Provocations of French presidential candidates jeopardize policy pursued by official Paris

The pre-election race in France is approaching its climax. Already in April 2022, the world will see the new head of the Elysee Palace. Or maybe he will be the same, since Emmanuel Macron has the opportunity to be elected a president for a second term.

His major rivals include Marine Le Pen from the National Rally party, Éric Zemmour, the writer and leader of the Reconquest, R! movement and, finally, Valérie Pécresse, the Republican candidate, head of the French region of Ile-de-France, which also includes Paris.

The last two should be viewed especially carefully, since they, even without being elected presidents, managed to annex a new colony to France.

How else to explain the arrival of first Éric Zemmour, and then Valérie Pécresse, to Armenia during their election campaigns?

Moreover, both candidates are received with great fanfare by both the ‘president’ and the ‘prime minister’ of Armenia. The quotation marks here are not accidental, since Armenia is clearly striving to become a colony of France if it is so actively involved in the pre-election race.

However, this raises several questions to Nikol Pashinyan: what was about Macron that Pashinyan didn’t like and made him 'betray' the French leader so easily? Maybe Pashinyan got offended by Macron’s last meeting with President Ilham Aliyev, after having failed to achieve preferences under the plaintive pleas of ‘les miserables’? Or maybe Macron has already realized that it is absolutely impossible to rely on the Armenian leadership that won't hesitate to stab a knife in a back accompanying it with their flattering speeches?

Besides, the betrayal of Russia, despite the vows of eternal loyalty, periodically voiced in the Armenian political establishment, shows the true face of Yerevan’s diplomacy.

Pashinyan wants to please absolutely everyone - Moscow, Washington, Paris, and, if necessary, even Beijing, Delhi. At the same time, he doesn’t realize that it is no longer possible to sit in 3-4 chairs with one butt in modern politics. Moreover, the Armenian leadership is trying to flirt with various political forces within the same country, and this is not a multi-vector policy, but something else, similar to the behavior of a ‘woman with low social responsibility’, as Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

While everything is more or less clear about Pashinyan’s principles, the question is why are the French presidential candidates striving to get additional votes using such illegal methods?

Valérie Pécresse, being an experienced politician, understands that if she visits the part of Karabakh, where the Russian peacekeeping contingent is temporarily stationed, without the permission of Baku, she will face clear hostility from Azerbaijan. And if suddenly she becomes the president of France, how will she correct her mistake? Was it worth to jeopardize the possible foreign policy of one of the pillars of European democracy for the sake of 1% votes of the French Armenians?

But the question is not just about the voters. Pécresse, perhaps, counts on the generous financial injections of Armenian well-wishers into her election campaign, and such frankly provocative steps as visiting the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan without notifying Baku can be quite useful to this end.

But, let’s hope that for France, everything will end quite well, and such a flippant lady won’t enter the Elysee Palace as president. Although the French policy has always been one-sided, frankly pro-Armenian, no French politician claiming the highest office in Paris has yet sunk to such an absurdity as paying an illegal visit to the sovereign territory of another country.

At the same time, this case again raises questions about the activities of the Russian peacekeepers. It is highly unlikely that Ms. Pécresse was taken to Khankandi in a truck under pretense of a sack of flour. It is absolutely impossible not to notice the motorcade of cars, like, say, a grenade, which an Armenian national threw at the Azerbaijani servicemen right at the Russian peacekeepers' checkpoint not so long ago.

The case with the illegal visit of the French presidential candidate to a part of the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan also demonstrates the political ignorance of the Russian peacekeepers. After all, France is one of the European countries that has been opposed by Russian foreign policy for several years.

And, finally, the peacekeepers are tasked precisely with ensuring security during the period of integration of the Armenian population of Karabakh into the socio-political life of Azerbaijan. Such visits do not at all serve the designated purposes, but rather incite hatred and encourage utopian ideas about some kind of ‘independence.’

The more such cases, the more urgent becomes the issue of creating a checkpoint of the Azerbaijani Border Service in the Lachin corridor. Moreover, it will help the Azerbaijani citizens of Armenian origin living in Azerbaijan’s territory, so that they wouldn’t stuff their heads with the delusional ideas of ‘barnstormers.’