Hraparak daily of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes as follows, in part: On May 8, [Armenian PM Nikol] Pashinyan was on a working visit to Moscow, where his meeting was held with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin. As a result of the meeting, it became known that the Russian side will pull out its border guard units from the RA Tavush, Syunik, Vayots Dzor, Gegharkunik, Ararat Provinces, where they were stationed after the 44-day war [in the fall of 2020].

The [Armenian] official propaganda machine and the officials have tried to present this fact in the light of "sovereignty;" in simple words, disobeying Putin, firstly ignoring an important circumstance as to how and by whose decision the [Russian] border guards had appeared in the mentioned places.

Meanwhile, they had appeared there by Pashinyan's decision and request. In fact, one of the demands presented by [Azerbaijani president] Aliyev in the still preliminary version of the peace treaty [with Armenia] was that representatives of a third country should not stand on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. We were given the part of that document where it is literally written clearly: "The parties must rule out the presence of third-party forces on their border line."

That is, Pashinyan has not manifested sovereignty and independence [of Armenia], but fulfilled another demand of Aliyev. This is why the Russian border guard forces will maintain their presence on Armenia’s national borders with Iran and Turkey.