Arkady Sarkisian has made his living by shipping containers full of ripe peaches and fish to Russia.

But after Moscow severed all transportation links this past week with Georgia, the main transit country for Armenian goods, Sarkisian has had to pay more to transport his containers by a less direct route.

Armenia’s prime minister, whose country is a close ally of Russia, insists that so far the Caucasus nation hasn’t suffered any financial losses. Sarkisian, though, angrily disagrees.

“And what about me?” he said. “What about dozens like me?”

Russia and Georgia have been locked in a bitter dispute since the arrests of four Russian officers by Georgia on Sept. 27 on charges of spying. Despite their release, Moscow has imposed a range of sanctions on its ex-Soviet republic neighbor to the south and tightened controls on Georgians living in Russia.

Politicians and analysts warn that Russia’s transport and postal blockade may end up economically isolating Armenia, Georgia’s landlocked southern neighbor. ~Seattle P-I

As if the excessive and unnecessary retribution against Georgia weren’t enough, Moscow’s sanctions on Georgia are damaging their one ally in the Caucasus.  While this highlights the undesirable position Armenia holds as a state heavily dependent on Russia for its energy resources and political support, it also points to the painfully short-sighted nature of Russia’s actions against Georgia. 

Putin seems to believe that he can inflict such costs on Armenia on the assumption that it has nowhere else to go for help; for reasons tied to the conflict in Karabakh and continued patchy relations with Turkey (related to ongoing official denial of the genocide), Armenia has been locked into tying itself more to Russia and Iran, but there is no guarantee that Armenians will receive this blockade well.  If the Russians shut off the natural gas pipelines, Armenia will suffer another one of the hard winters without resources for heating that led to massive deforestation of the Republic in the early ’90s.  There is also a basic sympathy between the two nations that Russia risks provoking.  Georgians and Armenians, though of different confessions, have lived side by side since late antiquity and the two peoples possess much shared history and culture (to give one of the better known examples, the great Armenian bard Sayat Nova was the court poet of the king of Georgia and lived in Tbilisi for many years); the heavy-handed and unjust mistreatment of Georgians at the hands of the Russian government can only sour Armenian views of Moscow and possibly encourage them to follow the Georgian example of pursuing a more pro-Western course in foreign policy in the future.  Stupid hegemonist overreaching is unwise whenever a government tries it, and especially in a case where it is not really warranted.  What is more, Moscow is playing perfectly into the hands of the Russophobes in the West who have been braying about the new Russian imperialism for years.  The neocons who have shilled for the causes of Yushchenko and Chechnya must be thrilled to have a new chance to vilify Russia–and this time Putin has given them good reason to vilify the Russian government.  Meanwhile, Putin is inflicting unnecessary suffering on two ancient Christian nations.  This ought to be condemned in the strongest terms. 

America and Europe are unfortunately fairly ill-suited to the task of mediating this conflict, given their one-sided and entirely biased intervention in Ukraine in 2004.  The two Caucasian republics are at the mercy of Putin, who is famous for nothing if not ruthlessness.  In the meantime, Western attachment to Azeri oil and the Turkish alliance have pushed our government into a rather ugly bargain, putting us at odds with Christian Armenia and her attempt to help fellow Armenians in Karabakh, which is what now makes the current blockade so damaging to Armenia.