Armenia is certainly free to work with the partners it deems necessary, but the choice made in favor of American technology does raise questions, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) spokesperson Maria Zakharova said at a press briefing Thursday.

"The small-capacity nuclear power plants proposed by Washington do not exist not only in the US, they do not exist in principle at all—they are only on paper," Zakharova added.

Also, she noted that no specific details were provided regarding the $9 billion project to build small modular reactors announced in Yerevan.

"This has sparked additional interest in the topic. What are these reactors and where are they already in operation? A number of Armenian news sources rushed to present the news as an unprecedented investment by Washington in the [Armenian] republic's economy. However, the key issue is the financial model of the project. According to the information available to the Russian side, this is not about direct US investments, but about a scheme in which the Armenian side will pay. It was assumed that the funding will be carried out through the TRIPP [i.e. the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity] fund, which, as previously announced, is being created for the implementation of infrastructure projects. However, at the moment the fund itself has not yet been created,” said the Russian MFA spokesperson.