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We can’t rely on Russia to protect us anymore - Armenian PM

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin

13 September 2023 17:32 (UTC +04:00)

“As a result of the events in Ukraine, the capabilities of Russia have changed,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told POLITICO in an interview, APA reports.

“Our strategy should be to try in this situation to maximally decrease our dependency on others,” he added. “We want to have an independent country, a sovereign country, but we have to have ways to avoid ending up in the center of clashes between West and East, North and South … There cannot be a case when Armenia becomes a ‘proxy.’ This is not permissible,” Pashinyan said.

“The model by which we have problems with our neighbors and we have to invite others to protect us — it doesn’t matter who these others are — is a very vulnerable model,” he added.

At the same time, Pashinyan accused the Russian peacekeepers temporarily deployed in the Garabagh region of Azerbaijan of not fulfilling their obligations.

Still, he added a caveat: “I can’t say though that if the Russian peacekeepers hadn’t been in Garabagh, the situation would now be better.”