MOSCOW, July 26. /TASS/. Russia is certain that meddling by NATO will significantly retard progress toward reaching a settlement in the South Caucasus region and will only bring destabilization in its wake, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing.
The diplomat was asked to comment on the expansion of the EU’s monitoring mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border to include non-EU countries as well as statements by Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan against this background that Yerevan expected more from the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) as regards border incidents.
Zakharova noted that the "appearance <...> of Canadians in Armenia quite obviously confirms that the European Union, having completely lost any foreign policy independence, now functions merely to service the interests of the US and NATO."
"We see that NATO countries, including the US and Turkey, are displaying heightened interest in the South Caucasus. We are confident that the alliance’s involvement in the region’s affairs will bring destabilization and will push the [achievement of a] full-fledged, full-format, robust peaceful settlement onto the back burner for a long time," she said.
Additionally, the diplomat stressed that the activities of the EU monitoring mission in Armenia are subservient to the overall mission of promoting a geopolitical standoff with Russia. "Of course, this is not about any contribution to the normalization of relations between Baku and Yerevan. This yet again confirms our assessment that the bilateral commission’s work on the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border should become one of the main mechanisms for de-escalation. And we welcome its latest meeting, it took place on July 12 after a long break, and we affirm our readiness to provide consultative assistance to the parties," Zakharova added.