Pashinyan Denies Reports Armenia Will Buy Wheat from Ukraine Instead of Russia

JAKARTA – Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stressed that Armenia had no intention of refusing Russian wheat for Ukrainian wheat.

‘This is impossible,’ said Pashinyan, responding to information from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service informing Yerevan would reject Russian wheat because of more expensive political considerations for Ukrainian wheat by donating EU funds.

“This is really a misunderstanding,” he continued.

It was previously reported that Armenia plans to reject Russian wheat for political reasons and chooses more expensive Ukrainian wheat at the expense of European Union funds, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Agency (SVR) press service statement said.

“Armenia has been buying wheat from Russia for years. Now, Armenia, as the saying goes, wants to ‘separate’ from Moscow for political reasons and provide assistance to Ukraine – to buy part of the wheat volume needed from the ‘merdeka’ country.

However, the problem is that Ukraine’s wheat is more than 50% more expensive,” the SVR press bureau said in a statement reported by TASS.

“As Yerevan emphasized, this is a matter of principle, hedges between the two sides keep friendship green. Brussels is proposed to compensate for the surplus of Ukrainian wheat prices. The main issue is where to get funding,” said SVR.

European Union countries are on the verge of a social and economic crisis, with a budget burdened by the Ukraine conflict and their ambition to defeat Russia, the SVR press bureau said.

“They want to pay off Ukrainian wheat using stolen Russian assets abroad, but these assets have not been taken,” said SVR.

“Belgium, which manages this ‘coupled cash fund’, has opposed the plan, citing potential liabilities. This is a wise attitude, as such liabilities could be huge,” the federal agency warned.