Olivier Decottignies: France did not say that Russia abandoned Armenia, it was just a statement of fact

ArmInfo. France did not say that Russia abandoned Armenia, it was simply a statement of fact. In a similar way, French Ambassador to Armenia Olivier Decottignies commented in an interview with Public Radio on the statement of the head of the French Foreign Ministry that Russia had not fulfilled its obligations on the political settlement of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, adopted within the framework of the trilateral statement of November 9, 2020.

In this regard, Decottignies recalled that Armenia and Russia are strategic partners, Armenia is a member of the CSTO and has had an agreement on bilateral cooperation since 1992. "We can say that the 2020 war (the 44-day Artsakh war) took place on the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan, where Russia could not interfere. But in May 2021 and September 2022, when Azerbaijan showed aggression against Armenia, when in a legal sense the situation is more than transparent - a country that is not a member of the CSTO will attack a CSTO member state, then Russia did not intervene here either. And in September 2023, the Russian military, who were in Nagorno-Karabakh to guarantee peace, did not budge when Nagorno-Karabakh was attacked by the Azerbaijani armed forces, the French diplomat noted. In this regard,

Olivier Decottignies noted that it can be stated that in recent years, every time Armenia needed Russia, it was not there. For this reason, as the ambassador noted, Armenia is trying to diversify its relations with France, India and the EU.