Pashinyan skips in-person attendance at upcoming EEU meeting in Belarus

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will not attend the Eurasian Economic Union meeting in Minsk in-person but will instead participate through videocall, the Belarusian BelTA news agency reported citing the country’s foreign minister.

Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Rizhenkov told the news agency that “Nikol Pashinyan will participate remotely, via videocall.”

The other leaders of the EEU member states have confirmed their in-person participation in the June 26-27 session, he said.

Back in 2024, Pashinyan had said that no Armenian official will visit Belarus as long as Alexander Lukashenko is in power there. The Armenian PM lambasted Lukashenko after the Belarusian leader admitted to having encouraged and wanting an Azeri victory during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Belarus and Armenia are formally CSTO allies and the remarks by Lukashenko were seen as backstabbing.

“I will never visit Belarus as long as Alexander Lukashenko is the president there. And overall I am announcing that no official representative of Armenia will visit Belarus now,” Pashinyan had said. He noted however, that he’d still have to maintain some contacts because both nations are members of the Eurasian Economic Union, as well as the CIS.