YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. The reports on pressuring Armenia to make it join the Union State of Russia and Belarus are not substantiated with facts and are false, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said at a press briefing.

She said that if such statements are made without facts and at the same time the country is mentioned and demands are presented, then it should be substantiated with facts.

“Are there facts? How was it pressured? How did it happen? No Russian official has ever talked about Armenia joining the Union State. Assessments have been given to all such statements,” Zakharova said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the same can be said in context of reports claiming Moscow is forcing Yerevan to provide a corridor to Azerbaijan. “This is fake, and we’ve talked about this many times as well. In accordance with the 11 October 2021 statement of the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, various ways of opening of connections, including issues related to restoring railway transport in Armenia’s south are discussed in the trilateral working group on the unblocking of all economic and transport connections in the region. One of the principles of this work, which isn’t disputed neither by Yerevan nor by Baku, is that the sovereignty over connections belongs to the country through which the connections pass,” Zakharova said.