Protestors in Yerevan threw eggs, tomatoes and potatoes at the Belarusian Embassy on Wednesday morning in response to Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s mocking comments about Armenia’s political leadership seeking to strengthen ties with the West.
“Who needs the Armenians besides us? No one needs them. Let them develop their economy and focus on what they have,” Lukashenko said in an interview with Russian state television earlier in the week.
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Ruben Mehrabian, an Armenian political commentator who was one of the protestors outside the Belarusian Embassy in Yerevan, mocked Lukashenko’s comments in return.
“You don’t decide who needs the Armenians. Thank God, we don’t need you and you don’t need us either,” Mehrabian said, according to a report by Radio Liberty in Armenia.
Later the same day, the Foreign Ministry of Belarus summoned the Armenian charge d’affaires in Minsk, condemning what it called “the act of vandalism” and demanding Armenian law-enforcement authorities punish those involved.
The incidents marked the latest escalation in tensions between Minsk and Yerevan following earlier reports that the former aided Baku’s plan to retake Yerevan-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh.
What happened?
In short, Armenia has accused Belarus of aiding Azerbaijan’s offensive to retake Nagorno-Karabakh, which has led to a series of diplomatic spats between Minsk and Yerevan.
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Armenia lost control over Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory with neighboring Azerbaijan, in Sept. 2023 following Baku’s lightning offensive in part due to the inaction of the Russian peacekeeping forces that were deployed in the region as part of earlier peace agreements.
The incident led to a drastic deterioration in Yerevan’s relationship with the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the political and military alliance among some post-Soviet states of which Armenia, Russia and Belarus were members.
In Oct. 2023, after Baku’s offensive, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met with Belarusian opposition leader in exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
In May 2024, Pashinyan said “at least two CSTO countries” aided Baku’s plans to retake Nagorno-Karabakh, which many believed to be Belarus and Russia.
On May 17, Lukashenko met Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in Nagorno-Karabakh, with the former pledging to aid Baku’s reconstruction efforts in the area.
On June 12, Pashinyan pledged to withdraw from the CSTO. A day later, he said no Armenian officials would visit Belarus as long as Lukashenko remains in power.
The same day, Politico released a report, citing leaked documents, which claimed Belarus delivered advanced weapons to Azerbaijan that were presumably used in the latter’s offensives against Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh.
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