Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan considers the point of view of returning the vector towards Moscow as a primitive judgment.

At Wednesday’s joint news conference with visiting Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, answering a reporter’s remark that the Armenian Prime Minister's participation in the EAEU summit after the "criticism of the Russian Federation" shows that "the vector of Armenia's foreign policy, which seemed to have turned towards Europe, is returning to Moscow," called such judgment primitive.

"I believe that in politics, and in particular in this case when they are talking about the relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation, one should be as attentive as possible to the wording. And don't be guided by primitive assessments. You said that in recent times Armenia has been criticizing Russia at a high level. I believe I quoted correctly. Please give examples as to when Armenia criticizes Russia at a high level. It’s another matter [that] we talked about different issues," the Armenian FM said.

As an example, he mentioned the criticisms on television.

"But the statement that Armenia criticizes Russia at the highest level is not true; at least in my recollection there are no episodes corresponding to such description. [But] this does not mean, and we have never hidden, that there were a number of problems that we talked about, and they related primarily to bilateral relations, and to the expectations of the Republic of Armenia within the framework of the CSTO, their implementation or non-fulfillment. They happened when the borders of Armenia were violated, the sovereign territory of Armenia came under occupation [by Azerbaijan], whereas there were actions or inaction of the [Russian] peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, and many other cases, some economic problems. Were there any problems, expectations from CSTO? Yes, there were. The issue was raised due to their non-fulfillment. Yes, it was raised. A few years ago, we were talking about increasing the efficiency of CSTO. Based on that, we maintained our participation in the CSTO at the level that was considered equivalent to the processes going on in the CSTO at that time or to the CSTO activity itself," said Mirzoyan.

At the same time, he reminded that the member countries of the CSTO are obligated to protect each other's borders.

"Our borders were violated, and we saw that the organization did not rush to protect those borders. This is in short—although the problem is much more complicated", he said.

Regarding Armenia’s participation in the EAEU summit, the FM said: "I don't think you've ever heard of the EAEU failing to meet expectations to the same degree as the CSTO I just talked about. I believe that in the case of Armenia, the EAEU continues to work effectively. Although the wording may be conditional, there are problems here, too, but you will not find wording similar to the CSTO case."

In general, the Armenian FM considered the wording of the aforesaid remark to be primitive, but the short answer to the question was “no.”