I would not like to create additional tension on this topic, because it does not mean that they are telling us that they have closed Russia’s market, now go to this other market. On the contrary, this is a good opportunity for us to diversify our policy. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this at a press briefing after Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, referring to the fact that, according to the Financial Times, the EU is preparing emergency assistance for Armenia to compensate for restrictions on Armenian imports to Russia.

“Of course, I am grateful to our partners in the European Union for responding so quickly, including for financial assistance, and there are laws by which we provide more targeted support to our business entities with our budgetary capabilities.

It is about today, because work is happening every day and events are happening every day. If you followed the government meeting today, the minister of economy noted that the number of new directions in which we are exporting already exceeds a dozen countries. Moreover, most of them we had zero exports to before. Now we already have batches, and we not only have batches, but also contracts for large and long-term batches.

I was not exaggerating when I was saying at the previous government session that our big task will be to secure contracts so that we can supply the goods in accordance with the contracts, because the markets that have opened now [to Armenia] have much greater expectations and demand than we were able to supply at all in the previous period.

We must support our business entities so that they can increase their production volumes so that they can not only solve a short-term problem, but also ensure their presence in those markets in the long term,” Pashinyan said.

And regarding the remark that many products in Armenia are spoiling today because they cannot be exported, the premier responded: “There is no such business entity [in Armenia] that has not had a single apricot spoil in the previous period. Roses also spoil, apricots also spoil, peaches also spoil, it is an integral part of the production process. It’s something else that wherever we see a rotten apricot, it becomes ‘top news.’ Tons of those apricots have rotted before as well, [but] no one paid attention to it. A thousand apologies, don't apricots rot in your house, don't apricots rot in our house? There is no such thing as waste-free production, and whoever among the economists gets the formula for waste-free production will receive the Nobel Prize of all Nobel Prizes."