870 people arrived in Armenia on Beirut-Yerevan flights

“Recent developments certainly have caused tension in the community, but it has not reached the level that people are ready to leave the country in a hurry. There are still no intentions in the community to leave Beirut, come to Armenia. People live with their regime, which was not good from the beginning: unstable electricity supply, water supply, deep economic crisis, but also with the hope that it will be good,” said Sinanyan.

“there is no clear information whether the persons who arrived in Armenia from Lebanon and then left Armenia and returned to Lebanon or went to some other countries because they cannot track the movement of people individually,” Sinanyan said.

“It is clear that the number of people arriving in Armenia [from Lebanon] is twice as many as those leaving [Armenia]. We keep in touch with various organizations and individuals of the Armenian community in Lebanon in order to have as realistic a picture as possible of what is happening there,” Sinanyan said.

According to Sinanyan, most of the Lebanese Armenians who arrived in Armenia have Armenian citizenship, and some others have applied for Armenian citizenship. As for the dead and wounded persons as a result of shelling, there are no Armenians among them because the military operations are taking place far from the Armenian-inhabited areas of Lebanon.

But Sinanyan did not give a clear answer to the question of whether Armenia is ready to accept Lebanese Armenians if there is a need for it. At the same time, however, the official noted that Armenia today has much greater opportunities to accept Lebanese Armenians than it could have accepted Syrian Armenians back in 2011 and 2012.