For Armenia, Russia is, in fact, more than just a strategic partner in legal, political, and economic terms, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan stated in an interview with the state-funded Public Television of Armenia.

“We [i.e. Armenia and Russia] have agreements that make us allies, and this is more than being a strategic partner. We are in the same economic integration area—the EAEU, we are members of the CIS. We [i.e. Armenia] have frozen, and I do not see any prospect of unfreezing our participation in the CSTO in any way.

But we have bilateral agreements and obligations that make us [i.e. Armenia and Russia] allies also in the defense sector; therefore, there is no need to generate panic moods and create artificial topics.

However, I do not want to hide the fact that certain problems have arisen in our relations. We see this in the media, in statements by politicians and in separate decisions of the Russian government—regarding restrictions on the import of certain Armenian products.

This indicates that our relations need to be healed and returned to a path of mutual respect for interests. We believe that Russian partners should be more interested in our right to make our own decisions. Our Russian partners blocked the export of Armenian products to Russia in vain. We [i.e. Armenia] are a member of the EAEU and have all the [respective] rights and obligations.

Armenia has fulfilled its obligations flawlessly. We [i.e. Armenia] do not want to further aggravate the situation. We continue to believe that Armenia and Russia are connected by friendly ties, and we believe that this should be the case also in the future,” the Armenian foreign minister noted.