It is no longer possible for Armenia to build a "great Armenia" by military means or to gain anything at all outside its internationally recognised borders, and more and more Armenian nationalists are beginning to realise this. However, their desire to appropriate other people's lands has not disappeared. And they have a new fix idea: if you cannot conquer, you can try to buy. Or "buy under international pressure" on the "seller".

However, there must be precedents for this, and such precedents have already been voiced through Margarita Simonyan, a high-ranking Armenian who is the Kremlin's chief propagandist.  On 26 March 2023, in a programme aired by another Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov on Russia 1, she suggested that Russia should "buy back" the currently occupied Ukrainian territories from Ukraine.

It is proposed to buy back the territories for about $300 billion of Russian central bank funds frozen in the West after Russia's aggression against Ukraine last February. Simonyan said the West would not return these frozen assets to Russia, but at the same time believes they "cannot be confiscated" - as if that would "undermine faith in the dollar, investment and the fact that it is possible to work with these countries".

"What is it called in chess? Zugzwang. Some kind of insurmountable situation. I propose a way out: they pay this money against our purchase of those territories, those lands that want to be with us. This is fundamental - we need those who want to be with us. We don't need outsiders, I personally don't need Lviv. Why do we need people who hate us? But people who want to be with us in our land will send this money to Ukraine, as for them. At the same time, so that they are not offended, they will call it reparations, and we will call it a purchase," Margarita Simonyan said.

Simonyan estimated the occupied territories of Ukraine and the people still living in them at $300 billion. In Margarita Simonyan's terminology, these are the people "who want to be with us", but in conditions of occupation, try "not to want it".

Most interestingly, this is not the first time Armenian nationalists have talked about "buying territories". The first " rubbish" about the purchase of territories (then Azerbaijani Karabakh) appeared immediately after Yerevan lost the 44-day war.

An audio recording of a 2016 conversation about the "purchase of Karabakh" was allegedly "posted" online at the time. The voices of then Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko can be heard on the audio. Serzh Sargsyan says on the recording that he does not understand why he would give away the Azerbaijani region, then occupied by Armenian forces, "just like that".

"How just like that? He (Aliyev) will pay. He offered 5 billion at the first stage," Lukashenko responds.

According to the then Armenian president, he cannot give up these areas because "the blood of five thousand Armenian soldiers has been spilled there".

"So what? We have 30 million dead, but we are not at war with the Germans," says Lukashenko.

Sargsyan also responds by offering to pay "six billion" to Azerbaijan, only for Azerbaijan to give up its claim to the Azerbaijani lands of Karabakh.

Official Azerbaijan did not comment on this audio recording: i.e. it was obvious that it was a fake. Why it was posted is another matter. Even after the 44-day war, the Armenian lobby began to "work out options" to start "trading" foreign territories - if they cannot be seized and held by force. And now there is a proposal by Margarita Simonyan, where the Ukrainian lands occupied by the Russian Federation are also "bargained for".

Such sentiments among Armenian nationalists are very dangerous for Georgia. After all, it is no secret that Armenians are already actively "mastering" occupied Georgian Abkhazia. And there are already many more Armenians than Abkhazians themselves.

At that, the further it goes on, the more talk about "investment" in the occupied territory, so that the puppet separatist authorities lift restrictions on purchase and sale of land and real estate. This will make the process of settlement of Abkhazia by Armenians even more intense.

Next to Abkhazia is "native" to Margarita Simonyan Krasnodar region of the Russian Federation, where in the coastal areas, especially adjacent to occupied Abkhazia, Armenians dominate everything. All the prerequisites for the creation of "maritime Armenia" have already been created by the Armenian lobby and "it will not pay the price".

If the geopolitical swindle of at least partial "purchase" of the occupied territories from Ukraine by Russia (not all of them, but Crimea and Sevastopol, for example) is succeeded, then we can be 100% sure that the same proposal from the occupants will be received by Georgia. For the benefit of the same Armenian lobby. Of course, Georgia will not go for such adventure under any circumstances.

Alexandre Zakhariadze