Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia’s third President, during a conversation with reporters following his court session on December 28, stated that there had been no overt pressure from either East or the West and Armenia’s actions were guided by the interests of the country and they [the government] refrained from engaging in adventurous endeavors. 

Sargsyan added that If Armenia had not maintained its relations with the CSTO, it would not have received billions of dollars worth of weapons.

“If we hadn’t become a member of the EAEU, the economy of today’s Armenia would've collapsed. For exactly two years, I was proposing and asking at first the [Eurasian] Customs Union, then the EAEU, the member countries to accept Armenia to that organization because not becoming a member in that organization would've led to the situation that was created in Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. At that time, a major part of our economy was agriculture. So where would we have sold our brandy apricots? There are so many greenhouses. Could we have taken to Turkey to sell tomatoes? Our EU partners knew about that very clearly. The public knew well that we were negotiating simultaneously with both the Customs Union - that preceded the EAEU - and the EU for two years,” the third president of Armenia added. 

Regarding whether it is feasible to collaborate with one country on economic matters while partnering with another country on security, Serzh Sargsyan stated, “No. It is impossible to have a security environment in one place and an economic one in another.”

Referring to Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan’s comments on the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, Serzh Sargsyan told reporters, “To be honest, I saw many lies and fabrications in that speech. But I must clearly emphasize an important fact that the leader of Armenia admitted that he sacrificed Nagorno-Karabakh consciously.”