By Raoul Lowery Contreras
While this is written, Russian bombs, missiles and bullets are killing Ukrainians in Russia’s next door neighbor, Ukraine.
This morning, I crossed the border into the U.S. from Mexico. Normally the pedestrian walkway is filled with thousands of Mexicans, today they were joined by a number of European-looking people. They were Ukrainians. They managed to fly from Europe to Mexico City, to Tijuana and to taxi to the San Ysidro entry gate. They seek asylum; they seek safety from Russians and Russian supporters.
Russia is not defending itself from bigots, pirates, racists and land thieves. Russia is attacking because it is the bigot, the pirate, the racist and the land thief.
No one can honestly support Russia in its unprovoked attack on its ethnic cousins, the fellow Slavic people of Ukraine.The key word is “honestly.”
Of all the nations in Europe, only two are supporting Russia in its vicious military attack on Ukraine, Belarus and Armenia. Even traditionally neutral Sweden and Switzerland have joined in sanctioning Russia and Russians for the Putin war on Ukraine.
Belarus is run by a backward-thinking Soviet apparatchik septuagenarian who couldn’t win an honest election if Belarus could even define one. Armenia is the other.
Armenia supports Russia. Actually Armenia does what it is told.
Supporting Russia politically is a “hopeful” action of a nation that has lost so much population in recent decades it is disappearing.
When asked which existing nations might cease to exist in coming years, one nationally known observer in Washington, D.C.’s Cato Institute named only one country – Armenia.
Armenia is famous for it’s multi-million people “Diaspora.” It sends millions of dollars home every year. Those millions annually rescue the country.
Remittances from Russia, France, Greater Britain, Canada, the U.S. and a dozen other countries total over 30% of the Armenian budget. Without its “Diaspora” remittances and even with Russian cash, Armenia simply couldn’t survive as a country.
That is why Armenia, through its American 5th Column, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), leads a gaggle of congress people in the House And Senate. That gaggle has gifted millions of American taxpayer dollars to Armenia every year since 1992.
I saw Ukrainians sitting on the ground six feet from the American border waiting to be questioned by American border guards. An hour later I read in my email that Armenia is slated to receive $45 million in American-taxpayer aid plus $2 million more for demining in Armenian-occupied Nagorno/Karabakh.
$47 million more for a country that sent soldiers to Syria to work for Russian forces slaughtering Syrians. $47 million more for a country that has Armenians fighting with Russians in Ukraine. $47 million more for a country that just recently returned remains of Azerbaijani civilians killed thirty years ago in Armenia’s 1994 Russian-supported land grab– remains they have held onto for 30 years.
Armenia hosts two Russian Army bases in its land-locked country. The Russians subsidize Armenia by paying exorbitant rents on those two properties. Russian border guards patrol Armenia’s border.
Russia arms the Armenian Army by selling billions in weapons on “credit.”
Nonetheless, Armenian agents in the U.S. that, by the way, are not registered foreign agents — ANCA — and congresspeople with Armenian constituents — like 300,000 in Los Angeles County — are betraying our friends in Ukraine; our friends and their children who are dying.
Friends we are helping to survive are fighting hard and courageously. Shame on those who are attacking Ukraine. Shame on Russia; shame on Belarus and shame on Armenia’s support of Russia’s unwarranted, vicious attack on a sovereign country.
Like Russia, its supporters must be exposed and like Russia, they must be punished. Stopping a $47 million dollar American-taxpayer grant to Armenia this year would be a start.
A reexamination of 30 years of American support for Armenia by Congress must occur.
Armenia’s 100 percent support of Russia and every criminal act performed since Armenia gladly joined Bolshevivk Russia into what became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, must be acknowledged and punished.
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Raoul Lowery Contreras is a United States Marine veteran, political consultant and the author of “The Armenian Lobby & American Foreign Policy” and “The Mexican Border: Immigration, War and a Trillion Dollars in Trade.” And, “A Hispanic View of President Donald J. Trump.” He hosts the Contreras Report on Youtube and Facebook.
