March 7, 2017 - 17:49 AMT
Moscow’s arming Azeris beneficial to Armenia: Russian news agency chief

Azerbaijan is arming Armenia through its own purchase of weapons from Russia, head of Russia’s state-run news agency Rossiya Segodnya Dmitry Kiselyov said.

“Azerbaijan can buy armaments from Israel, the U.S. and Russia. The world's second largest exporter of weapons, Russia supplies arms to the international markets and shows, where Azerbaijan, like many other countries, buys weapons,” he said.

Kiselyov urged against searching for political implication behind the sale of arms to Azerbaijan. According to him, Moscow thus maintains relations with Baku.

Kiselyov expressed the belief that Armenia benefits from relations between Russia and Azerbaijan, since Russia, according to him, uses the money received from Azerbaijan to develop its military-industrial complex, thus gaining an opportunity to arm Armenia.

“Azerbaijan thus buys weapons for Armenia through Russia,” he said.

Armenian authorities and people were not happy with Russia’s sale of ammunition to Azerbaijan during the four-day war in early April, 2016. Russian officials, however, defended the deals, claiming that Moscow “thus maintains the balance in the South Caucasus.”

Azerbaijan on April 2 unleashed a large-scale military offensive against Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh), which claimed the lives of hundreds on both sides. Chief Armenian and Azerbaijani defense officials reached an agreement on the cessation of hostilities on April 5 in Moscow.

Also, Kiselyov said fluency in Russian language is vital for Armenia.

“Once I happened upon a young Armenian taxi driver who didn't know how to say something in Russian, which really surprised me. My words drew a stormy response, with people reacting not to the fact that the driver could not count in Russian, but to my saying that ‘Russian language is a security factor for Armenia,’” Kiselyov explained, according to Radio Sputnik Armenia.

He stressed that he never recanted and still believes that fluency in Russian is vitally important for Armenia. According to Kiselyov, "without this (knowledge of Russian - editor’s note), it is impossible to imagine the future of Armenia."