The Russian Kommersant newspaper published an article refuting the words of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan regarding the trilateral statement of November 10, 2020, AzVision.az reports.

According to the article, Pashinyan's thesis during yesterday's press conference that the Russian Federation is the guarantor of the security of Azerbaijan's Karabakh sounded "rather unexpectedly."

"There is no mention of guarantees from Russia regarding Karabakh in the trilateral statement dated November 10, 2020," the article said.

The article cites Pashinyan's words that Armenia cannot rely solely on Russia.

"We have to record that the current security architecture was not working. To be frank, we knew it would not work," he said, and acknowledged that his government was "trying to establish cooperation in the military-political sphere with numerous other countries". Moscow, he says, is aware of these attempts," the article added.

"At the same time, according to Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia lost the war in the fall of 2020, not because of the insufficient help of the allies (although he had hinted at this factor more than once), but because the 'fifth column' was operating in the army. Who he was referring to, he did not specify," the newspaper said.

According to the article, apparently, Nikol Pashinyan considers influential Russian media managers of Armenian origin Margarita Simonyan and Aram Gabrelyanov, as well as State Duma MP Konstantin Zatulin, to be a 'fifth column', too.

Answering a reporter's question, he confirmed for the first time that these people are indeed banned from entering Armenia. "Armenia is a sovereign state and has the right to expect respect for itself, to use tools of sovereignty to suppress encroachments against its interests," he explained. "Respect must be shown including in relation to the authorities elected by the people," the article said.

According to the article, when it came to negotiations on a peace treaty with Azerbaijan, Pashinyan made it clear that he was committed to the Western format of the settlement and that it was not worth expecting an early transition to the Russian format.

More about: #NikolPashinyan