MP Sargis Khandanyan urges Mr. Slutsky to familiarize himself with the Belarusian President's statements in Azerbaijan

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YEREVAN, DECEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. It has not been possible to point to a single action taken since 2018 that could be considered an unfriendly act by the Republic of Armenia towards its allies.

 On the contrary, there are numerous examples of the opposite, starting with the 44-day war, the aggressive actions against Armenia's sovereign territory, and the lack of response from the CSTO to these actions.

 Sargis Khandanyan, Chairman of the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia, told Armenpress in response to recent comments by Leonid Slutsky, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, who stated that the current Armenian authorities are following Western instructions and trying to harm relations with Russia and Belarus, as well as claiming that the Armenian Prime Minister is attempting to 'shift the responsibility for the loss of Karabakh onto whoever he can, just to remove the burden from himself.'

As for the loss of Karabakh and the question of finding those responsible for it, it would be good for Mr. Slutsky to familiarize himself with the statements made by the President of Belarus in Azerbaijan months ago, in which Lukashenko admits his country’s participation in the preparation of the war unleashed against Nagorno-Karabakh.

Continuing to talk about responsibility, it is a fact that after the 44-day war, Russian peacekeepers were given a mandate to ensure the security of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh—a mandate that ended tragically with the forced displacement of the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Government of Armenia conducts our country's foreign policy solely by taking into account the state interests of the Republic of Armenia, and only the people of Armenia have the exclusive right to give instructions to the Armenian authorities—a circumstance that, I suppose, is quite alien to my State Duma colleague.

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