BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 25. The message from Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, dated September 24, 2023, contains unacceptable attacks against Russia and can only evoke rejection, the Russian Foreign Ministry said, Trend reports.
"It's an attempt to shift responsibility for failures in domestic and foreign policy onto Moscow. Nikol Pashinyan's recent statements confirm our previous conclusions that the processes instigated by the West and fueled by Yerevan are not episodic but systemic and are destructive for his own country and our allied relations," the ministry noted.
"The prime minister, in fact, admitted that Armenia had been deliberately prepared for a shift away from Russia all this time. His steps aimed at setting a new Western vector for Armenia's development are unconvincingly justified by alleged mistakes made by Russia and the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization)," the ministry pointed out.
"At the same time, it's forgotten that our states share many interests in security and development, and the US and other NATO countries have set as their goal not only to strategically damage Russia but also to destabilize our common Eurasian space," the ministry added.
Earlier, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said during an address to his fellow citizens that the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the tools of the Armenian-Russian strategic partnership are not enough to ensure Armenia's external security.
In addition, Pashinyan, in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, made the assertion that "Russia is distancing itself from the South Caucasus". According to the prime minister, Russian peacekeepers [temporarily stationed in Azerbaijan under the trilateral statement signed by Azerbaijani, Armenian and Russian leaders following the 2020 second Karabakh war] "do not control the Lachin road" because "Russia is either unwilling or unable to do so".