Risking further condemnation by Moscow, Armenia will attend this weekend a Western-backed conference in Switzerland aimed at building broad international support for Ukraine’s proposals to end the conflict with Russia.
The Swiss government invited more than 160 states and organizations to the summit which it will host outside the city of Lucerne on June 15-16. Around 90 of them accepted the invitation. The participants will include U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and the leaders of key European Union member states.
Armen Grigoryan, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, announced on Friday that he will also attend the summit. It was not clear whether he will be joined by senior Armenian diplomats or other officials.
Russia, which was not invited to the peace conference, has dismissed it as a publicity stunt aimed at isolating it in the international arena. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the gathering will boil down to “general conversations of a demagogic nature and a new set of accusations against Russia.”
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Moscow did not immediately react to Grigoryan’s announcement which highlights a continuing deterioration of Russian-Armenian relations. The Russian Foreign Ministry had condemned Grigoryan’s participation last October in a multilateral peace forum in Malta also initiated by Ukraine, calling it a “demonstrative anti-Russian gesture of official Yerevan.”
Tensions between Moscow and Yerevan have risen further since then. In February, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian openly criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine during a visit to Germany. Parliament speaker Alen Simonian echoed the criticism in April, prompting an angry reaction from Russian lawmakers.
And late last week, the Russian Foreign Ministry sent a note of protest to Yerevan over pro-Ukrainian statements reportedly made by two other Armenian officials during a May 24 visit to a town near Kyiv.