Russia recalled its ambassador to Armenia for consultations on Friday amid a continuing deterioration of relations between the two longtime allies.
“On May 24, the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Republic of Armenia Sergei Kopyrkin was summoned to Moscow for consultations,” the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova, said in a short statement.
Zakharova gave no reason for the dramatic move. The Armenian government did not immediately react to it.
Kopyrkin was recalled two days after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian claimed that two member states of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) helped Azerbaijan prepare for the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. He is believed to have to referred to Russia and Belarus.
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Zakharova on Thursday challenged Pashinian to name those countries. She also said that Russia repeatedly tried to stop the 2020 war, pointing to Pashinian’s rejection in October 2020 of a ceasefire agreement brokered by Moscow and accepted by Azerbaijan. The Armenian side suffered more territorial losses before Pashinian agreed to another Russian-brokered truce two weeks later.
Russian-Armenian relations have worsened significantly since then, with Yerevan seeking closer ties with the West and accusing Moscow of not honoring its security commitments to Armenia. Earlier this year, Pashinian repeatedly threatened to pull his country out of the CSTO. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov charged in March that Pashinian’s administration is “leading things to the collapse of Russian-Armenian relations” at the behest of the West.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pashinian discussed the unprecedented rift when they met on May 8 right after a Eurasian Economic Union summit in Moscow.