Russian Foreign Ministry summons Armenian ambassador to present representation, express protest

MOSCOW. Sept 8 (Interfax) - The Russian Foreign Ministry has summoned Armenian Ambassador Vagharshak Harutyunyan to present him with a harsh representation and hand him a note of protest over a number of actions and remarks by the Armenian leadership, the ministry said on Friday.

"We have noted that the Republic of Armenia's official circles and political elite have recently expressed certain doubts about the reasonability of allied ties within the Collective Security Treaty Organization and with Russia on a bilateral basis, as well as the practicability of the package of trilateral agreements between Moscow, Yerevan, and Baku of 2020-2022 on ways to normalize Armenian-Azerbaijani relations," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"Against this backdrop, the Armenian leadership has undertaken a number of unfriendly steps in the past few days," including launching the process of ratifying the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute, the prime minister's wife Anna Hakobyan's trip to Kiev, and holding military drills involving the United States on Armenian territory, it said.

"In connection with this, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Armenian Ambassador to Moscow Vagharshak Harutyunyan to be presented with a harsh representation. In addition, he was handed a note of protest, which says that Armenian National Assembly Chairman Alen Simonyan's insulting remarks addressed to Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson and Information and Press Department Director Maria Zakharova and the Russian foreign policy agency as a whole were unacceptable," it said.

"At the same time, Moscow firmly assumes that Russia and Armenia remain allies, and all agreements on developing and bolstering partnership relations will be fully honored to the benefit of our two countries' peoples. Among other things, this concerns the organization of CSTO exercises and sending the organization's observer mission to the republic in the future to facilitate a settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan," it said.

"The Russian side will continue to apply all the necessary efforts toward this," it said.