Russian President Vladimir Putin has brushed off comments from French counterpart Emmanuel Macron that Moscow was destabilizing the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Baku and Yerevan have been locked in a conflict over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region for almost three decades, after Armenian-backed separatists seized the mainly Armenian-populated region.
Macron, in an interview with France 2 television, accused Moscow of deliberately provoking recent clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan as part of an effort to destabilize the volatile region.
"I believe that these statements show a lack understanding of the course of the conflict," Putin said during a meeting of leaders of CIS countries in Kazakhstan on October 14, adding that Macron's remarks "sounded inappropriate, I would even say perverse, therefore (they are) unacceptable."
On October 13, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Macron's statement was "outrageous, absolutely unacceptable."
Macron hosted a meeting last week in Prague with European Council President Charles Michel bringing Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev together with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
The two sides fought a six-week war in 2020 before a Russian-brokered cease-fire, resulting in Armenia losing control of parts of the region, which is part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent districts.
Under the cease-fire Moscow deployed about 2,000 troops to the region to serve as peacekeepers.
The European Council said that Aliyev and Pashinian agreed in Prague to a civilian European Union mission along their common border, where clashes last month killed more than 200 people in the worst flare-up of fighting between the two neighbors in almost two years.
The civilian EU mission will start later this month and will last for a maximum of two months.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on October 12 that the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization was prepared to send its own mission to the Armenian-Azerbaijani border after the group's Security Council approves it.
