Russia challenged Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Thursday to name the two ex-Soviet states which he claimed helped Azerbaijan prepare for the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“I know at least two CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) member countries that participated in the preparation of the war against us,” Pashinyan declared in Armenia’s parliament on Wednesday. “The goal of that war was the non-existence of an independent Armenian state.”
Azerbaijan’s 2021 and 2022 incursions into Armenian border areas and September 2023 military offensive in Karabakh pursued the same goal, he said, answering a question from a lawmaker representing his party. The lawmaker asked him to react to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s latest pro-Azerbaijani statements made during a visit to Azerbaijan.
Commentators suggested that Pashinyan referred to Belarus and Russia. The premier claimed in February that in the wake of Azerbaijan’s recapture of Karabakh last September “Russia’s most high-ranking representatives” encouraged Armenians to take to the streets and topple him.
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Commenting on his latest allegations, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said: “I wonder which countries the prime minister of Armenia talked about. Should we all guess that or they will tell us later?”
“I think it would be quite logical to name them if such serious statements are made. But let’s leave that to official Yerevan,” she told a news briefing in Moscow.
Zakharova insisted that Russia did its best to make sure that Armenia “doesn’t feel abandoned and forgotten” during the six-week war with Azerbaijan. It repeatedly tried to stop the war, she said, pointing to Pashinyan’s rejection in October 2020 of a ceasefire agreement brokered by Moscow and accepted by Azerbaijan. The Armenian side suffered more territorial losses before Pashinyan agreed to another Russian-brokered truce two weeks later.
Russian-Armenian relations have deteriorated significantly since then, with Yerevan seeking closer ties with the West and accusing Moscow of not honoring its security commitments to Armenia. The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly denounced the pro-Western tilt in Armenia’s foreign policy, saying that Pashinyan’s government is systematically “destroying” bilateral ties.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pashinyan discussed the unprecedented rift when they met on May 8 right after a Eurasian Economic Union summit in Moscow. Putin agreed to withdraw Russian troops and border guards from Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan. They were deployed there at Yerevan’s request during and after the 2020 war.