Armenia Declines To Back Western Statement On Ukraine

· September 10, 2024

Azatutyun.am

Armenia confirmed on Monday that it did not join last week the United States and European nations in calling for the creation of a special international tribunal for the “crime of aggression against Ukraine.”

In a joint September 5 declaration, the justice ministers of nearly four dozen Council of Europe member states as well as the U.S., Canada and Japan also backed an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Russian President Vladimir Putin last year for war crimes allegedly committed by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine.

The declaration was adopted during a conference in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius titled “Towards Accountability for International Crimes Committed in Ukraine.”

The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Ani Badalian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that Armenia did not sign up to the declaration. She did not comment further. Russia media reported last week that Yerevan withdrew its signature at the last minute.

Armenian Justice Minister Grigor Minasian apparently did not attend the Vilnius conference in person. Minasian was in Yerevan on September 5, chairing a session of a government task force working on a new Armenian constitution.

The Armenian parliament controlled by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party ratified the ICC’s founding treaty, also known as the Rome Statute, last October seven months after The Hague tribunal issued the arrest warrant for Putin. The move welcomed by the West came amid Yerevan’s deepening rift with Moscow.

Russian officials said at the time that it will cause serious damage to Russian-Armenian relations. Still, Putin seemed to downplay the development afterwards, saying that he will visit the South Caucasus country again in the future.

In what some Armenian commentators see an overture to Moscow, Pashinian’s office announced last week that he will attend a summit of the BRICS group of major emerging economies that will take place in the Russian city of Kazan from October 22-24. Over the past year, the Armenian premier has boycotted several summits of Russian-led groupings of ex-Soviet states.

Speaking at an August 31 news conference in Yerevan, Pashinian said: “One cannot talk about a country like Russia with sarcasm and insulting language … If we have done something like this until now, we have done it wrong.”