The Russian Foreign Ministry appears to have edited the response by Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry Artyom Kozhin to a question by an Azerbaijani journalist about Armenia’s stance on the settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

The journalist said, in particular, that in one of his recent interviews, the Armenian Prime Minister stated that "negotiations on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict are impossible without the participation of the illegal regime created in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan”. He further asked how much these statements “complicate the settlement process and prevent the parties from finding a common language”.

According to the video of the briefing published by various media outlets, Kozhin said: “Generally, loud statements that do not fit within the tracks laid down, in particular, by the OSCE, probably, seem to be non-constructive.”

In the edited version of the Russian ministry’s transcript of the briefing, however, the Foreign Ministry has replaced the word ‘generally’ with the word ‘your’, which leaves the impression that the response is addressed to the Azerbaijani journalist’s provocative question.

The statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry has been largely criticized in the various circles of the Armenian society, as well as by a number of officials who took to social media to express their discontent regarding the incident.