In the Russian media community, people joke about “Putin’s Armenians.” Besides Gabrelyanov, there is Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russia Today. Born in Russia’s Krasnodar region, where some 280,000 Armenians constitute the second largest ethnic group, she made it to the head of the largest state-owned news agency with an annual budget of around $300 million. In 2014, Simonyan married Tigran Keosayan, a Moscow-based film director of Armenian origin, and son of the prominent Soviet Armenian director Edmond Keosayan. Keosayan hosts a Saturday show at another state-controlled TV channel, NTV. Among his recent guests was Misha Galustyan, one of the Russia’s best known, if not the best known comic actors. Galustyan, also born in the Krasnodar region, is deeply involved with Russian state politics. He endorsed Putin for the presidency and was a torchbearer for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. In 2014, he wrote on his Facebook page that protests in Ukraine were directed by “the overseas clients,” thus supporting Russian propaganda conspiracy theory that the U.S. State Department masterminded the Ukrainian revolution.

And then, there is Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s longest-serving Minister of Foreign Affairs, who according to different reports, is half-Armenian. Having publicly admitted that he “has Armenian blood,” Lavrov has never expressed any patriotic sentiment to any nation other than Russia.

Another, and much more keeping-in-touch-with-Armenian-roots pattern is represented by some of the richest people of Armenian origin, such as Ruben Vardanyan, the billionaire behind the IDEA Foundation and the Aurora Prize, (two humanitarian initiatives). Rather similar, though less known, is the case of Artur Janibekyan, the Yerevan-born Russian TV producer. He manages a number of Russia’s most popular TV channels as the head of the entertainment department of "Gazprom Media Holding,” the largest Russian media company. For the last couple of years, Janibekyan has been actively investing in different Armenia-related projects. Last year, he bought a piece of St. Gregory the Illuminator’s relics to contribute to the Armenian Cathedral of Holy Transfiguration in Moscow. He also bought William Saroyan's house in Fresno, California, to make it the writer’s museum.

These Russian Armenian businessmen, while actively investing in the development of Armenia, tend to distance themselves (at least publicly) from politics, and prefer to talk about mentality instead (as though these exist in separate vacuums).

According to Vardanyan, to make Armenia prosperous, we need to become Global Armenians, that is “to change our mentality, to change our mindset, to change how we behave and how we all do business.” However “deep” this philosophical concept may be, it lacks the key factor of any country’s prosperity — good governance.