The second president of Armenia suspects that the current authorities had intentionally prevented his planned visit to Moscow—during the recent Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) war—to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Robert Kocharyan stated about this at Thursday’s press conference for Russian media, Sputnik-Armenia reports.

"In fact, this was a very dark story; the story related to my [coronavirus] test. I will tell about it one day; but only after the change of power. I do not want to put people in a bad situation who told me the details of that story. The thing is that I later gave an antibody test, the result of which was negative," Kocharyan said.

Given this, he has reasonable doubts that in fact, he was simply not allowed to go to Russia.

Kocharyan added that he did not have direct contacts with the Russian president during the war, but had the opportunity to convey to the Russian leadership his views and position on the situation.

At the end of last October, it became known that the Armenian investigative body had returned Kocharyan his passport, as he was to go to Russia to discuss the issues of organizing aid during the war. However, it was later reported that Kocharyan's visit to Moscow was canceled because he had tested positive for COVID-19.