After a hectic few days, I’m trying to catch up with posting links to news on significant events as they pertain to Armenia. Perhaps one of the most interesting stories is news that an MP from the ruling Republican party, Tigran Arzakantsian, was last week shot, stabbed and hospitalized after a night out gambling in a Moscow casino. Last Wednesday, RFE/RL reported on the incident.

“According to eyewitnesses, a fight broke out in the casino among three of the guests” shortly after 4:00 a.m. (0000 GMT),” the Russian news agency Interfax quoted a police official as saying. “During the fight, one of the participants twice shot his opponent, who has been hospitalized…. Doctors are fighting for his life,” the official said.

“It was in the casino of the hotel,” another unnamed Russian police official told the AFP news agency. “Two unidentified attackers came up to him and stabbed him several times. He fought back, then one of them shot him in the arm. Then they ran away.”

[…]

Arzakantsian, who was reelected to the Armenian parliament on the HHK ticket last May, had already been hospitalized in the Russian capital after being beaten up at another local casino in March 2006. Reports in the Armenian press likewise linked the incident to a gambling dispute, saying that the 41-year-old businessman lost as much as $800,000 on a single night and failed to pay up. He denied those reports.

The latest incident coincided with a visit to Moscow by an Armenian government delegation headed by Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian. Arzakantsian was reportedly present Sarkisian’s meeting with Armenian university students there held on Tuesday evening. Both Sharmazanov and a government spokeswoman in Yerevan said he was not a member of Sarkisian’s delegation.

The following day, RFE/RL also published an update on Arzakantsian’s condition and reported that Moscow police believe the incident was an attempt on his life. At time of writing, RFE/RL reported that Arzakantsian’s condition was considered by doctors to be “evaluated as grave” although he was conscious and able to speak.

The Russian Regnum news agency cited unnamed law-enforcement sources as saying said that Arzakantsian was a frequent guest at the Metropol casino, having visited it for 33 times this year alone. His visits to the National Assembly in Yerevan have been far more rare.

Life for some in Armenia is quite lucrative indeed.