Russia on Thursday slammed French President Emmanuel Macron’s comments on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, accusing Moscow of leading the Caucasus to “destabilize”.
By AFP
LRussia on Thursday slammed French President Emmanuel Macron’s “unacceptable” comments, which Moscow accused of “destabilizing” the Caucasus in the wake of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
“Emmanuel Macron’s statements that Russia will use the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to destabilize the South Caucasus are appalling and completely unacceptable,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
On Wednesday, during an interview on the France 2 channel, the French president said: “Russia intervened in this conflict, it obviously played the Azerbaijan game with Turkish complicity and came back there to weaken Armenia”.
“This is a ploy to destabilize Russia, which seeks to create chaos in the Caucasus to weaken and divide us all,” he said.
From the point of view of Russian diplomacy, “these absurd comments of the French president prove that Paris has no interest in establishing lasting peace in the region and doubts his country’s ability to play a constructive role there”.
“Unlike France (…) Russia has contributed to the resolution of the conflict in a practical way,” the ministry underlined.
Russia’s ally Armenia and Turkey-backed Azerbaijan have fought two wars for control of Nagorno-Karabakh over the past three decades.
The 2020 conflict ended with a ceasefire and mediation by Russia, which stationed a contingent of peacekeepers there.
In September, at least 286 people were killed in fresh clashes along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.
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