Ninety percent of Armenian detainees were captured after the deployment of Russian peacekeepers and in the zone of responsibility of Russian peacekeepers. What does the West have to do with this? Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia stated this during his press conference Monday.

He recalled that in 2021, in the presence of Russian peacekeepers, a tractor operator carrying out agricultural work in was killed by an Azerbaijani sniper's shot. According to Pashinyan, this incident did not receive a proper response from Russia.

"Besides, it was the [Russian] peacekeepers who convinced him that he would not have any security-related problems at work. What does the West have to do with this?" Pashinyan said.

He assured, however, that there is no question of pushing Russia out of the agenda of the relations between Armenia and the EU, Armenia and the US.

"It is another matter that we have started discussing security issues with our Western partners. I don't know if we did it right or not, but they didn't discuss such issues before, as they thought that security architecture had been formed in the region, which would at least de jure be reliable and invulnerable. When we see that this security system does not function for objective or subjective reasons as stated in the binding documents, we [i.e., Armenia] discuss security issues with our Western partners as well," the Armenian premier said.