ArmInfo.The Russian side has always been and remains committed to the alliance and strategic partnership with Armenia, to the agreements that exist. Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, who oversees relations with the CIS countries, stated this in an interview with RBC, referring to tensions in relations between Yerevan and Moscow.
"We proceed from the need to preserve and strengthen those centuries-old close ties between the Russian and Armenian peoples, which have given both peoples and both countries a lot for their development. And it is all the more unpleasant to see steps from official Yerevan, which, in our opinion, are clearly due to opposite logic than the one I tried to present to you. There is an escalation of anti-Russian rhetoric in the statements of Armenian officials, the escalation of an unfriendly information campaign in the Armenian media space. All this is based on an absolutely untenable narrative that Russia did not help Armenia, that Russia did not protect the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh," he said.
According to him, this is propaganda rhetoric lying on the surface, but one must see the underlying reasons and origins of the events that occurred on September 19-20. In this vein, he recalled that on November 9, 2020, the leaders signed a tripartite statement that determined the modalities of the movement towards a peaceful settlement between Azerbaijan and Armenia and approaches, including to resolving the Nagorno- Karabakh problem.
"And along with those normalization tracks that I mentioned above, there was also a gentleman's agreement that the status of Karabakh would be determined in the future. Everyone proceeded from this. But almost a year ago, significant changes took place in this picture. In October 2022 At the Armenia- Azerbaijan summit under the auspices of the European Union, Nikol Pashinyan recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and the belonging of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.
The validity of the Alma-Ata Declaration of December 1991, which defined the border between the new independent states that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union within the borders between the republics of the USSR, was confirmed," he said.
Galuzin once again emphasized that the Armenian leadership recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan and confirmed this recognition in May 2023 at the next similar Armenia-Azerbaijan-EU event.
"And this radically changed the conditions under which the joint statement of November 2020 was signed, and the situation around the Russian peacekeeping contingent. This was a 180-degree turn in the position of official Yerevan. Because the current leadership of Armenia, upon coming to power several years ago, officially stated that Artsakh, as they call Karabakh, is Armenia," the diplomat emphasized.
Galuzin added that at the stage when the Armenian leadership recognized Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, not a word was said about the rights and security of the Karabakh Armenians. "The relevant documents published by the European Union say nothing about this. The situation has changed radically, and it is very strange to accuse us of not fulfilling something. We must also remember that before this Russia and other CSTO members "We were ready to send a CSTO observation mission to Armenia, but, unfortunately, we received a refusal from the top Armenian leadership. Instead, an EU observation mission was called to Armenia, which did not play any stabilizing role," the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation assured.
Regarding the prospects for bilateral relations, Gazuliz emphasized that Moscow on the issue of Russian- Armenian relations has always proceeded from the fact that at the official level it will resolve complex issues professionally, through diplomatic channels, without any emotional injections into the media space.
"But, unfortunately, from the Armenian side we saw an intensification of public unfriendly rhetoric towards Russia. As a result, we were forced to publish the statement you mentioned on September 25. That is, we transferred this controversy to the public space only after the intensity of the anti-Russian rhetoric of the official Yerevan began to go off scale.
"I do not want to cite here all our arguments indicating the unfriendly behavior of official Yerevan. But let me only remind you of such steps as holding Armenian-American military exercises against the backdrop of the refusal of educational and training activities within the CSTO. About such challenging steps as the trip of the wife of the Prime Minister of Armenia to Kiev and communication with [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky, as well as the communication between the Speaker of the Armenian Parliament, Mr. [Alen] Simonyan, and his Ukrainian colleague [Ruslan] Stefanchuk. Recently, various kinds of guests from Europe have been frequenting Yerevan, who also used Yerevan as a platform for various kinds of anti- Russian statements.
"And yet, we very much hope that Yerevan will adequately assess the importance of the Russian-Armenian partnership. And they will proceed, first of all, from those strong, centuries-old ties that unite the peoples of Russia and Armenia," he said.