Belarusian diplomat reacts to Pashinyan's "impulsive" statement about Lukashenko
YEREVAN, 13 June. /ARKA/. Alexander Shpakovsky, a senior diplomat at the Belarusian Embassy in Moscow, told the Russian news agency TASS that Minsk is calm in assessing Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's "impulsive statements" about Belarusian President Lukashenko.
Speaking in parliament earlier on Thursday, Nikol Pashinyan said he would never visit Belarus again as long as Alexander Lukashenko is its president. He reiterated that Lukashenko had participated in and supported Azerbaijan's preparations for a 44-day offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, and wished victory for Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijani media quoted Lukashenko as saying that during a visit to Azerbaijan in May this year, he and his Azerbaijani counterpart concluded that Azerbaijan could win a war against Nagorno-Karabakh.
Belarus, like Armenia, is a member of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) that failed to meet its obligations towards Armenia when Azerbaijan invaded parts of Armenian territory in 2021 and 2023.
In a February interview, Pashinyan said Armenia had frozen its participation in the CSTO because the bloc had failed his country. Since then, the Armenian authorities have skipped all CSTO meetings, and the Yerevan government recently refused to contribute to the CSTO's general budget.
Shpakovsky said: "We calmly assess Nikol Pashinyan's impulsive statements. We still respect the brotherly Armenian people, with whom Belarus is bound by centuries-old historical ties."
Shpakovsky stressed that Belarus "does not interfere in the internal political processes in Armenia, as well as in Yerevan's foreign policy."
"Based on the principle of reciprocity, we expect similar approaches from our partners and allies, so we watched with some bewilderment the contacts between representatives of the Armenian leadership and leaders of Belarusian political extremists," the Belarusian diplomat noted.
Shpakovsky emphasised that at the same time the choice of partners and allies is a sovereign matter of official Minsk, and in this case the "either-or" approach is unacceptable.
"We have interacted and will continue to interact with brotherly Azerbaijan in all spheres, including military-technical," Shpakovsky stressed. -0-
