The ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, claimed that she was so surprised by the comments reported by Armenian media that she double-checked them. She said Pashinian deviated from the Armenian consensus on the matter.
Speaking during a visit to Switzerland on January 24, Pashinian said Armenians should “understand what happened” in 1915 and what prompted the subsequent campaigning for international recognition of the World War One-era slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians as genocide.
Armenian historians, opposition figures and retired diplomats expressed outrage at the remarks, saying that Pashinian cast doubt on the fact of the genocide. Armenian Diaspora groups that have long been at the forefront of the recognition campaign also deplored Pashinian’s remarks. The wave of condemnation continued even after the premier insisted on January 31 that he did not deny or question the genocide officially recognized by over three dozen countries, including the United States and Russia.
Russia – Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova attends a meeting of the Russian and Cuban foreign ministers in Moscow, June 12, 2024.
“To be honest, I never expected that this issue will be treated in a way different from the historically shaped, absolutely consensus-based position of both the state of Armenia and the people of Armenia and Armenians as an ethnic group,” Zakharova told reporters. “I never thought that this consolidated position formulated and formed for years will be subject to any changes within the Armenian polity. But you can see what statements we have been hearing lately.”
“But this is not a question for us. Our country, our position was formulated through a corresponding statement by the State Duma which we regularly cite and which you know,” she said, referring to an Armenian genocide resolution adopted by the Russian parliament in 1995.
Amid his administration’s lingering tensions with Moscow, Pashinian seemed to imply on January 24 that foreign powers, notably the Soviet Union, were behind the decades-long Armenian campaign for genocide recognition.
“How is it that in 1939 there was no Armenian genocide [recognition] agenda and how is it that in 1950 the Armenian genocide agenda emerged?” he told a group of Swiss Armenians.
His critics countered that the term “genocide” was coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin after 1939, during the Jewish Holocaust. Lemkin also drew on the events of 1915.
