Lavrov warns Armenia, says political scientist

Speaking with Alpha News, Russian political scientist Sergey Stankevich commented on the statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that Russia has repeatedly drawn the attention of its Armenian colleagues that the true goal of NATO is to strengthen its positions in the South Caucasus region and create conditions for manipulation based on the “divide and rule” scheme.

According to the expert, Lavrov’s words are more of a warning than a description of the situation.

“I believe that this statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is more of a warning than a description of the situation. We need to focus on the warning here because, if you look at the facts, there is no direct cooperation between Armenia and NATO. There is some speculation about possible cooperation with the European Union. There are some statements by NATO that welcome the distancing of Armenia from Moscow, which it supposedly noticed. But all this does not concern fundamental changes on the ground. Nothing like this happens on the ground.

Armenia today has not withdrawn from any integration project, neither from the EAEU, the economic project, nor from the CIS, the political platform, or even from the CSTO, that is, the military-political bloc. Moreover, there have been no official statements about the possibility of withdrawing the Russian 102nd military base from Armenia.

And here, one should not exaggerate the threat to Armenia from Russia, but certain statements, of course, are alarming and this is a reason for warnings. NATO is not serious about the Caucasus now. I don’t see any prerequisites for NATO to try to somehow increase its presence in the South Caucasus. Turkiye already has influence there, and NATO is unlikely to be able to somehow go beyond this influence,” Stankevich said.