Putin Surprised by Pashinyan's Decision to Recognize Artsakh as Part of Azerbaijan, Lavrov Says

Russian President Vladimir Putin was quite surprised that Pashinyan recognized Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan in Prague. This was stated by Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in an interview with Izvestia.

According to Lavrov, when they signed a document in Prague in 2022 during the so-called European Political Community summit, an initiative proposed by Macron, with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in the presence of European Council President Charles Michel, that Artsakh is part of Azerbaijan, "no one informed us about this."

“Subsequently, during the next meeting, Putin told Pashinyan, 'We were surprised that you decided this way.' There was no explanation because Pashinyan had always asked us to remember that alongside efforts over the last three years, the issue of resolving the status of Nagorno-Karabakh should be addressed somehow, and we were doing that. But when he signed that this territory is part of Azerbaijan, the issue of status disappeared,” Lavrov added.

“And when people began to leave Artsakh, Nikol Pashinyan asked Vladimir Putin, 'Why did you leave the residents of Artsakh to the whims of fate?' I apologize, for God's sake, it was you who decided that they are not citizens or do not aspire to any citizenship of Azerbaijan,” Lavrov concluded.