Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday that he does not see how Armenia can join the European Union (EU) sooner than other countries that have had EU membership candidate status for years.

“If we talk about [Armenian PM] Nikol Pashinyan’s government’s aspirations towards the European Union, they can lie, and I certainly think that the European Union authorities will deceive. I do not see how Armenia can end up in the European Union, in whose queue Turkey and, for example, Serbia have been standing for decades,” Lavrov said during the International Festival of Youth.