Yerevan /Mediamax/. Russian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mikhail Bocharnikov said that “the actions of the European Union are aimed at ousting Russia from the process of normalization of Azerbaijani-Armenian relations.”

The diplomat said this in an interview with Haqqin.az cited by TASS.

Commenting on the forthcoming deployment of an EU civilian mission in Armenia, which will monitor the regions bordering Azerbaijan, Bocharnikov said:

“Don’t be deceived by the term ‘civilian mission’. I heard about the talks that the French gendarmes would be included in this mission.

The Russian ambassador said “if attempts are made to expand the presence of this mission in Karabakh, this may lead to problems for the Russian peacekeepers and border guards present in the region.”

“Such problems will pose a security risk to the entire region, to the entire South Caucasus. The people of this region do not need extra-regional forces to solve our problems here,” Bocharnikov stressed.

He expressed conviction that “there are no grounds for introducing an extra-regional factor in the South Caucasus.”

“But the European Union is doing just that. Moreover, it does it very clumsily, without coordinating it with Azerbaijan. In this matter, the European Union looks like a direct appendage of the United States and NATO, which consider the CIS space as a zone of opposition to Russia and are actually trying to bring a geopolitical component here,” the Russian ambassador said.