INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Friday that Russia had failed to deliver weapons Yerevan had already paid for and accused
Russia's media of destabilizing his country's political situation.The remarks highlighted Armenia's growing rift with its powerful ally
after Russian peacekeepers failed to prevent Azerbaijan's offensive to retake its Armenian-controlled separatist enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh."There is a problem related to the delivery of (Russian) weaponry and equipment for which we have already paid," Pashinyan
said in televised remarks."Discussions are currently underway on the mechanisms to resolve this problem.""We know that the Russian
Federation itself needs weapons," he said, in an apparent reference to Russia's war on Ukraine.He also said there were "certain problems"
with respecting a bilateral agreement "stipulating that no efforts should be made to interfere in internal affairs or destabilize the
domestic political situation in the country" by the two countries' broadcast media.Pashinyan said Yerevan had invited Moscow to hold
consultations "so that we can resolve this issue in a friendly and normal atmosphere."Armenia is part of the Moscow-led Collective Security
Treaty Organization (CSTO) which obliges Russia to defend Armenia in the event of a foreign invasion.Pashinyan has accused the CSTO of
failing to fulfill that obligation, including when Armenia said its neighbor and arch-foe Azerbaijan had seized small pockets of its
territory over the past three years.On Thursday, Armenia refused to participate in a CSTO summit in Belarus, the latest expression of
Yerevan's growing discontent.In a lightning military operation in September, Azerbaijan reclaimed its breakaway region of Karabakh from
Armenian separatist forces which had controlled the mountainous territory for three decades.
