By Artak Khulian and Shoghik Glastian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is planning to visit Armenia next week amid the South Caucasus country’s mounting tensions with Russia, a diplomatic source told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on February 26.
The visit will likely take place on March 4, the source said, adding that Zelenskyy will also travel to Azerbaijan.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry pointedly declined to confirm or deny the information, saying only that it informs the public about the visits of foreign leaders “in due course.”
Ukraine’s charge d’affaires in Yerevan, Valeri Lobach, was also coy about the possibility of such a trip. “The spring will bring positive events to Armenia,” he told reporters on Friday.
News of Zelenskyy’s possible trip followed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s recent visits to Germany and France during which he stepped up his criticism of Russia. In particular, Pashinyan for the first time denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying that it violated a December 1991 declaration in which newly independent Soviet republics recognized each other’s Soviet-era borders.
