{"id":20378,"date":"2016-12-20T19:49:21","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T15:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uic.am\/20378"},"modified":"2016-12-20T19:49:21","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T15:49:21","slug":"union-of-informed-citizens-response-to-accusations-of-the-russian-embassy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uic.am\/en\/20378","title":{"rendered":"\u201cUnion of Informed Citizens\u201d Response to Accusations of the Russian Embassy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today the press service of the Russian Embassy in Yerevan had a publication<\/a> in which it addressed the publications of the sut.am<\/span> website founded by the Union of Informed Citizens NGO.<\/p>\n

In particular, the following publications have aroused the embassy\u2019s dissatisfaction: \u201cAmbassador Attributes Armenian and UN School Meals Program to Russia<\/a>\u201d, and \u201cAmbassador Volinkin Lied about the Arms Supply<\/a>\u201d. The embassy called these publications and their authors \u201cfalse\u201d, \u201cbought with thirty pieces of silver\u201d, \u201cordered\u201d, \u201cfresh Psaki\u201d (probably meaning former Spokesperson of the US Department of State), and etc.<\/p>\n

Moreover, they claim in the embassy that the main donor of UN\u2019s Armenian school meals program is Russia with its 18 million USD donation (without giving any reference except for DLMN news<\/a> website). Sut.am website has referred to Head of Financial and Accounting Department of RA Ministry of Education and Science Gevorg Yeghinyan\u2019s words, who denied funding of that program by Russia (you can find the audio-recording here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Regarding the analysis related to the 200 million USD loan, the embassy offers to make an inquiry to the RA Ministry of Defense or simply watch the military parade on September 21. But \u201cUnion of Informed Citizens\u201d did make inquiries on this issue both to the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Finance. Not receiving any answer from the RA Ministry of Defense, we have published the response of the Ministry of Finance, in which one can clearly see that no arms supplies had been made by that time within the framework of the loan agreement. The scanned version of that letter was published<\/a> in the material in question.<\/p>\n

Sut.am is always guided by official materials and cannot guarantee that everybody will like their publications. This is even more actual in the light of the circumstance that very often we do not manage to get any comment or information from the press service of the Russian Embassy in Armenia.<\/p>\n

We will not make an attempt to address the political part of the embassy\u2019s statement. We will only note that the claims regarding the anonymity of the materials and the \u201cauthors behind them\u201d are unacceptable. The materials of sut.am are investigative in nature, a whole team usually works on them and, as it is mentioned<\/a> in the website, the author of the publications is \u201cUnion of Informed Citizens\u201d. There is no need to write a specific person\u2019s name under the news material in the same way as there is no need to write a specific name under the embassy\u2019s press release in question.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnion of Informed Citizens\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today the press service of the Russian Embassy in Yerevan had a publication in which it addressed the publications of the sut.am website founded by the Union of Informed Citizens NGO. In particular, the following publications have aroused the embassy\u2019s dissatisfaction: \u201cAmbassador Attributes Armenian and UN School Meals Program to Russia\u201d, and \u201cAmbassador Volinkin Lied<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t