Russia says Armenia tries to cut off relations between the two countries

Russia accuses Armenia of seeking to cut off the strained relations between the two countries when Yerevan increasingly doubts Moscow's role as a guarantor of regional security.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Russian media that "the Armenian administration deliberately seeks to sever relations with the Russian Federation under flimsy pretexts and by distorting the history of the past three years."

Armenia recently hinted that it might withdraw from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russian-led alliance among former Soviet republics.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan described the country's security alliances as "ineffective" after the Azerbaijani army regained control of Nagorno-Karabakh last September, a separatist Armenian-majority region supported by Yerevan in the 1990s.

AFP