ArmInfo. Armenia sees no advantage in continuing to host Russian military bases on its territory after Azerbaijan retook the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian prime minister told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Wednesday.
Azerbaijan seized Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning military operation on Sept. 20, which caused over 100,000 ethnic Armenians to leave their homes for Armenia.
"These events have essentially brought us to a decision that we need to diversify our relationships in the security sphere, and we are trying to do that now," Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told the WSJ.
Later on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian authorities were unaware of Pashinyan's comments.
"We don't yet know if he said those words, and if he did, where, in what context. We don't have such information," Peskov was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
Russia's military presence in Armenia includes garrisons in two locations and an airbase. Moscow has long seen itself as the guarantor of Armenia's security in the volatile South Caucasus, a region crisscrossed with oil and gas pipelines.