Belarusian Ambassador to Armenia Alexander Konyuk was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vahan Hunanyan told the Novosti-Armenia news agency. Hunanyan didn't provide any other details.
The move came after Lukashenko’s televised interview with a pro-Kremlin Russian journalists on Monday in which the Belarusian president argued that some post-Soviet countries - Ukraine, Armenia, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states will have to join the Union State of Russia and Belarus, ARKA reports.
Speaking about Armenia, Lukashenko said: "Armenia has nowhere to go. Do you think anybody needs them? They've already seen it, Nikol Pashinyan has already seen it."
“We believe that the Belarusian president’s peculiar geopolitical analyses aim to first and foremost serve his domestic political agenda and have nothing to do with Armenia and its foreign policy,” the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, Vahan Hunanyan said in written comments to the press.
Lawmakers representing Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party slammed Lukashenko for his unacceptable remarks.
MP Vagharshak Hakobyan said such words are unacceptable and inappropriate for the president of the country, and such language is reprehensible.
"The leader of a partner country has no right to express such thoughts about another partner country. I want to remind who needed Armenia during the recent events in Kazakhstan. I am sure that Mr. Lukashenko knows better than anyone else who needs Armenia," he said.
Another MP Rustam Bakoyan raised a counter question: "And who needs Lukashenko?"
"This rhetorical question, I think, (the Belarusian) people asked him, and the processes that occurred in that country were a clear assessment of Lukashenko’s previous terms in office, the state he kept the country in and what the result is," he said.
Armenia and Belarus are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union, which consists of several former Soviet republic.
