On 23 October, the Russian federal public TV "Channel One Russia" aired a programme containing offensive and absolutely unacceptable statements directed at high-ranking officials of the Republic of Armenia, the press office of the Armenian Foreign Ministry reported on 24 October. In this connection, the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Armenia, Sergey Kopyrkin, was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia. During the meeting a note of protest was handed to the ambassador.

Following the news, the speaker of the Russian State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, said that it had been decided to postpone indefinitely the discussion of the bill on the recognition of Armenian driving licences. "It does not correspond to Russia's interests," the chairman of the lower house of parliament stressed. "We considered it right to postpone the discussion of the bill, which proposes to grant Armenia additional preferences, while the deputies of the republic, the leadership and the government have not taken any steps to consolidate the status of the Russian language. We have made such decisions with regard to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where the Russian language is enshrined in the constitution," Volodin stressed, adding that Russia expects the same from Armenia.

During the programme on Channel One, negative statements were made against Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Andranik Tevanyan, leader of the opposition Mother Armenia bloc, also took part in the programme. "Nikol Pashinyan repeatedly rejected Russia's peace plans for Nagorno-Karabakh with the words 'we will fight', and in the end surrendered the territory without a fight. In doing so, he tied his hands once and for all, and in his speech to the European Parliament he openly descended to the level of pro-Western rhetoric. He is trying to help America inflame the conflict zone, sometimes he tries to sit on two chairs, sometimes he wants to move away from the allies he put on the list of unfriendly neighbours and officially go to the new curators," the programme description reads.

The one-hour programme stressed that about 320 million US dollars are transferred from Russia to Armenia every year, and that Moscow has four military bases and at least 4,000 border guards on Armenian territory.