Russia (bbabo.net), - The meeting between Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, scheduled for April 5 in Brussels, caused new diplomatic tensions between Baku, Moscow and Yerevan.

Responding to accusations from Azerbaijan that the trilateral forum could lead to an escalation of the situation in the South Caucasus, the Armenian Foreign Ministry indicated the day before that the meeting will be dedicated exclusively to strengthening Armenia-EU-US cooperation and is not directed against any third party.

Moscow was not convinced by these assurances.

“Why official Yerevan pretends that it does not understand what we are talking about is a big question. Indeed, before the eyes of the whole world, Armenia is turning into an instrument for the implementation of extremely dangerous plans of the collective West, which contradicts the fundamental interests of the Armenian people,” noted Russian Foreign Ministry representative Maria Zakharova.

Yerevan has not yet responded to this statement.

The representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic, Ani Badalyan, late in the evening of March 27 objected to her Azerbaijani counterpart Aykhan Hajizade, pointing out that Baku was delaying and disrupting the peace process, rejecting proposals from the EU and the United States for a meeting of leaders and foreign ministers on Western platforms.

Prior to this, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry stated that the EU and the United States would share responsibility for any destabilizing actions of Yerevan.

A few hours later, Washington unraveled the brackets: US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller argued that the meeting in Brussels should focus on supporting Armenia's economic resilience as the country's authorities work to "diversify trade ties and address humanitarian needs."

According to officials in Yerevan, they expect a substantive discussion of the development of Armenia's capabilities in both the political, economic, energy and humanitarian spheres from the meeting in Brussels.

The day before, the speaker of the parliament of the republic, Alen Simonyan, did not rule out that based on the results of Pashinyan’s contact with von der Leyen and Blinken, assistance to Armenia would be announced, provided by the so-called European Peace Facility (EPF) - a mechanism for extra-budgetary financing of European Union activities that have military implications. and defense implications within the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Armenian political scientist Tigran Grigoryan, in a conversation with Radio Azatutyun (the Armenian division of Radio Liberty***), advised not to overestimate the importance of the planned meeting in Brussels.

“First of all, this is some kind of political and diplomatic support for Armenia against the backdrop of tense relations (the West) with Azerbaijan. We saw that Azerbaijan successfully ousted the West from the negotiation process (with Armenia), and we can say that this is a response from Washington and Brussels to Azerbaijan itself,” the expert noted.

Let us recall that the current stage of Armenian-Russian relations is characterized by significant mutual tension after a number of steps on the part of Yerevan, which were considered unfriendly and even “anti-Russian” in Moscow. This is the ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, holding joint military exercises with the United States, meetings of representatives of the political leadership of the republic with representatives of Ukraine. New irritation in bilateral relations appeared as a result of the issue recently raised by the Armenian leadership about the “freezing” of the republic’s participation in the CSTO and the “ineffectiveness” of the mechanism for ensuring its security in partnership with Russia. In this regard, Yerevan increasingly began to talk about the need to “diversify” its foreign policy.

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**An organization whose activities are recognized as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation

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