Yerevan was the first to withdraw its ambassador in Minsk, a move announced shortly after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian deplored Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s fresh pro-Azerbaijani statements made about a month ago.
Speaking in the Armenian parliament amid continuing antigovernment protests in Yerevan, Pashinian said he and other Armenian officials will not visit Belarus as long as Lukashenko remains in power.
The Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Anatoly Glaz, suggested later on Thursday that Pashinian is trying to deflect public attention from the month-long protests that have attracted tens of thousands of people. He implied that Pashinian has trouble coping with “serious emotional stress” caused by the protests.
“We respect the Armenian people and sincerely wish them leaders who will genuinely think about the future of the country and the well-being of the people,” Glaz added tartly.
Glaz’s Armenian opposite number, Ani Badalian, said the Armenian Foreign Ministry has sent a note of protest to Minsk in connection with his remarks regarded by Yerevan as an interference in its internal affairs. Badalian also said that Belarus itself lacks “a leader who thinks about the country’s future.”
Lukashenko has been in power for 30 years. In March this year, Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonian met in Brussels with Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled Belarusian opposition leader who challenged Lukashenko in a 2020 presidential election. Pashinian and Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan also made a point of speaking with Tsikhanouskaya during a European Union summit in Spain last October.
In an apparent reference to those conversations, another senior Belarusian diplomat rebuked Armenian leaders on Thursday for maintaining contacts with “leaders of Belarusian political extremists.”
Visiting Azerbaijan about last month, Lukashenko declared that he had not only been aware of Baku’s plans to try to reconquer Nagorno-Karabakh by force but also approved them during his meetings with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held before the 2020 war. It is not clear why Yerevan waited for weeks before reacting to that statement.
The Belarusian strongman has long raised eyebrows in Armenia with his pro-Azerbaijani comments on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and arms sales to Baku.
Citing “leaked files” obtained by it, Politico.eu reported late on Thursday that “Belarus actively aided Azerbaijan’s armed forces between 2018 and 2022.”
“The services offered included modernizing older artillery equipment and providing new gear used for electronic warfare and drone systems,” wrote the publication.