Vice-President of the Republican Party of Armenia Armen Ashotyan today posted the following on his Facebook page:

“This afternoon, Mnatsakanyan and Lavrov held phone talks, and the Armenian side issued a press release regarding the phone talks.

The phone talks were held on the backdrop of the current crisis in the negotiations over the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the visit of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan to Moscow and, in this context, the noticeable undertaking of Russia.

However, what is worth mentioning is that even though the day is over, there was no official press release on the phone talks with Zohrab Mnatsakanyan posted on the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.

At first sight, the following three questions come to mind in regard to this ‘organizational’ problem:

1. If today’s talks were merely ‘technical’, why did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia issue a press release?

2. If the talks were important, why did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia keep silent?

3. And finally, the most troubling question: Did Moscow prefer to officially keep silent about the talks with Yerevan on the backdrop of the Azerbaijani foreign minister’s visit to Moscow?”