Russian President’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that during the Armenian speech of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the SCO summit, he wondered whether a Russian translation of his speech would be provided, TASS reports.
“I thought, where is the “earbud” that I need to put in to hear the Russian translation, and I also thought, will there be a Russian translation, is there an Armenian-to-Russian translator? The translation was carried out,” Peskov said.
According to him, Pashinyan’s Armenian speech was a signal of an attempt to emphasize Armenia’s sovereignty. “Why couldn’t it have been announced in Russian, to be honest, we didn’t understand. But this is the choice of the head of state, and we respect it,” the Kremlin representative noted.
Pashinyan spoke in Armenian for the first time at the SCO+ session in Bishkek, while previously he used Russian at such international events. He was the only CIS leader to speak in a language other than Russian at the summit.
Earlier, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov also called Pashinyan's decision to speak in Armenian "strange," while noting that Armenian is the state language of Armenia.
