Russia said Thursday that it was “incomprehensible” its ally Armenia hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a European summit earlier this week, and cautioned the country against deeper European integration.<\/p>\n
Ties between Armenia and its former imperial ruler Moscow have frayed in recent years.<\/p>\n
The former Soviet republic froze its membership in the Russian-led CSTO military alliance in 2024 over Russia’s failure to defend it against Azerbaijan, and has expressed an interest in joining the European Union, angering the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
“Russian society, with deep indignation and bewilderment, not only saw, but above all remembered, the fact that Armenia, which we are accustomed to considering a friendly, fraternal country, had served as a platform. For whom? For a terrorist,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a weekly briefing.<\/p>\n
Since launching its full-scale military offensive in February 2022, Russian officials have regularly hurled insults at Zelensky and routinely call Kyiv a “terrorist state” — outbursts rejected and dismissed in Kyiv as baseless wartime propaganda.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“No one in Armenia’s current leadership snubbed Zelensky. So whose side are you on, historically?” she asked.<\/p>\n
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told reporters Thursday: “Back in 2022-2023 I already stated that, on the issue of Ukraine, we are not an ally of Russia.”<\/p>\n
Zakharova also criticised a joint declaration that Armenia and the European Union adopted at their summit on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The document recognises Yerevan’s aspiration to join the bloc, as well as deepens cooperation between the two sides in economic and security matters.<\/p>\n
“Such a course on the part of the Armenian authorities will sooner or later lead to Yerevan’s irreversible involvement in Brussels’ anti-Russian line, with all the ensuing political and economic consequences for Armenia,” Zakharova said.<\/p>\n
The nation of three million people bordering Iran and Turkey passed a law last year formally declaring its intention to apply for EU membership.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Pashinyan in April that Yerevan could not be a member of both the European Union and the Russian-led customs bloc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia said Thursday that it was “incomprehensible” its ally Armenia hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a European…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8598,61,8599,1156,1204,396,833,59,413,475,1290,478,477,476,6171,66,1292,1202,47,3185,5,1288,1293,2036,261,231],"class_list":{"0":"post-16073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-accession-of-ukraine-to-the-european-union","9":"tag-afp","10":"tag-anti-russian-sentiment","11":"tag-armenia","12":"tag-collective-security-treaty-organization","13":"tag-diplomacy","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-foreign-policy","16":"tag-foreign-relations","17":"tag-foreign-relations-of-russia","18":"tag-foreign-relations-of-ukraine","19":"tag-global-politics","20":"tag-government","21":"tag-government-of-russia","22":"tag-government-of-ukraine","23":"tag-international-relations","24":"tag-invasions-of-ukraine","25":"tag-nikol-pashinyan","26":"tag-politics","27":"tag-politics-of-ukraine","28":"tag-russia","29":"tag-russia-ukraine-military-relations","30":"tag-russia-ukraine-relations","31":"tag-russian-irredentism","32":"tag-russo-ukrainian-war","33":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}