Gagik Tsarukyan, who heads the Prosperous Armenia party, recently attended a “For Freedom of Nations” forum in Moscow organized by Russia’s governing United Russia party.

Tsarukyan, an Armenian businessman with pro-Russian leanings, in a Facebook post today writes that he attended the conference to improve relations between Yerevan and Moscow that have soured of late.

“Everyone is concerned today. Everyone understands that today's Armenians are broken. They don't have their former pride, and this is not a favorable situation for our people,” Tsarukyan writes.

Delegates from more than fifty countries attended the forum that discussed “countering interference in the sovereign affairs of states and countering destructive neo-colonial practices.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a statement welcoming forum participants, wrote that Russia has “done a great deal to dismantle the foundations of the colonial system and support national liberation movements.”

Putin accused the West of aggressively interfering in the internal matters of independent states, including Russia, to “preserve its stranglehold and domination at any cost, to economically subjugate other countries, to deprive them of sovereignty and to impose alien values and cultural traditions upon them.”

The top photo shows Tsarukyan (left) talking with Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev who now chairs the United Russia party.