YEREVAN -- Protesters in Yerevan pelted the Belarusian Embassy with eggs and other produce and demanded that diplomatic ties with Minsk be cut over statements made by authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka about Armenia's shift westward.
The protests on August 21 came a day after Lukashenka, speaking in an interview with Russian state television, sharply criticized Armenia's current diplomatic friendliness with Western countries amid tense relations between Yerevan and Moscow.
"Who needs Armenians? Nobody. Let them develop their economy and rely on their own resources. What is France? Who is [French President Emmanuel] Macron? Tomorrow, when Macron is gone, everybody will forget about the Armenians," Lukashenka said in the interview.
The rally in front of the Belarusian Embassy on August 21 was organized by the pro-Western For the Republic Party. The party's leader, Arman Babajanian, was among the protesters.
The party's petition demanding the expulsion of the Belarusian ambassador and calling for ties to be cut with Minsk was also signed by two other political parties -- the Republic and the European Party. Three pro-Western nongovernmental organizations also signed the petition.
Earlier in May, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian claimed that two member states of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) helped Azerbaijan prepare for the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
It is believed that Pashinian was referring to Russia and Belarus.
Russian-Armenian relations have worsened significantly since Azerbaijan managed in September last year to regain control over Nagorno-Karabakh, which had been under ethic Armenian control for three decades.
Yerevan has been seeking closer ties with the West, accusing Moscow of not honoring its security commitments to Armenia.
Pashinian has repeatedly threatened to pull his country out of the CSTO, prompting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to charge that Pashinian’s administration was "leading things to the collapse of Russian-Armenian relations" at the behest of the West.