YEREVAN. – The United States (US) Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, Evelyn Farkas, stated that should there appear a plan to deploy Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, this needs to be considered by the OSCE Minsk Group participants (US, Russia, and France), reported Zhamanak daily.

“In response to this statement, Nagorno-Karabakh Parliament former MP Vahan Badasyan, speaking to us, reacted: ‘The people need to be unanimously against the deployment of peacekeeping forces in the NKR [i.e. the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic; Artsakh].

“Russia certainly has no right, as a [Minsk Group] co-chairing party for the settlement of the [Karabakh] issue, to put in peacekeeping troops. Russia’s interests don’t coincide at all with the interests of Armenia.

“No one shall allow the deployment of peacekeeping forces here. The peacekeeping force is the Artsakh army,’” Zhamanak quoted Badasyan as saying.