“Union of Informed Citizens” Response to Accusations of the Russian Embassy

Today the press service of the Russian Embassy in Yerevan had a publication in which it addressed the publications of the sut.am website founded by the Union of Informed Citizens NGO.

In particular, the following publications have aroused the embassy’s dissatisfaction: “Ambassador Attributes Armenian and UN School Meals Program to Russia”, and “Ambassador Volinkin Lied about the Arms Supply”. The embassy called these publications and their authors “false”, “bought with thirty pieces of silver”, “ordered”, “fresh Psaki” (probably meaning former Spokesperson of the US Department of State), and etc.

Moreover, they claim in the embassy that the main donor of UN’s Armenian school meals program is Russia with its 18 million USD donation (without giving any reference except for DLMN news website). Sut.am website has referred to Head of Financial and Accounting Department of RA Ministry of Education and Science Gevorg Yeghinyan’s words, who denied funding of that program by Russia (you can find the audio-recording here).

Regarding the analysis related to the 200 million USD loan, the embassy offers to make an inquiry to the RA Ministry of Defense or simply watch the military parade on September 21. But “Union of Informed Citizens” did make inquiries on this issue both to the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Finance. Not receiving any answer from the RA Ministry of Defense, we have published the response of the Ministry of Finance, in which one can clearly see that no arms supplies had been made by that time within the framework of the loan agreement. The scanned version of that letter was published in the material in question.

Sut.am is always guided by official materials and cannot guarantee that everybody will like their publications. This is even more actual in the light of the circumstance that very often we do not manage to get any comment or information from the press service of the Russian Embassy in Armenia.

We will not make an attempt to address the political part of the embassy’s statement. We will only note that the claims regarding the anonymity of the materials and the “authors behind them” are unacceptable. The materials of sut.am are investigative in nature, a whole team usually works on them and, as it is mentioned in the website, the author of the publications is “Union of Informed Citizens”. There is no need to write a specific person’s name under the news material in the same way as there is no need to write a specific name under the embassy’s press release in question.

“Union of Informed Citizens”