Forces that are interested in sowing hatred and fear between Armenia and Russia are behind the provocation involving the detention of Sputnik columnist Ashot Gevorgyan, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.
On Thursday, the head of Russian cooperation agency Rossotrudnichestvo, Yevgeny Primakov, said that pro-Russian blogger Mikael Badalyan had gone missing in the Armenian city of Goris. Later, Sputnik reported that the blogger was detained together with the agency's columnist Ashot Gevorgyan by the Armenian Investigative Committee.
Later, the Armenian Investigative Committee said that Badalyan and Gevorgyan were detained in the south of Armenia as part of a case of illegal firearms trafficking.
"It is obvious that behind this provocation are the very forces that are not interested in bringing our countries and their peoples closer together, they are interested in the opposite — in alienating people, in sowing hatred, fear, mistrust," Zakharov said to the participants of the Russian-Armenian media forum that has kicked off in Yerevan.
Moscow is concerned about the growing number of pro-Western media structures in Armenia aimed at discrediting Russia, the diplomat said, adding that the tendency to spread "one-sided and negative information about Russia and Russian-Armenian relations" has recently prevailed in the information space of Armenia.