Armavir City Duma MP Aleksey Vinogradov has vandalized Garegin Njdeh’s Memorial with black spray paint.
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The Embassy of the Republic of Armenia in Russia has condemned the incident that Armavir City Duma MP Aleksey Vinogradov pained the memorial board dedicated to Garegin Njdeh (honoring a historical figure hailed by many Armenians as a national hero) located in the territory of an Armenian church in Armavir City.
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“We express our deep indignation over the incident in Armavir. We regard what City Duma member Alexei Vinogradov did as an act of vandalism in the territory of the Armenian Church and a manifestation of arbitrariness running contrary to the legal order. This action does not correspond to the spirit of Armenian-Russian relations and may cause ethnic tensions,” the Armenian embassy in Moscow said, according to Interfax, without specifically mentioning the Njdeh memorial plaque.
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The embassy warned that the paint attack reportedly committed by a Russian politician in the territory of a local Armenian church on Tuesday could cause ethnic tensions in the community.
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A statue to Njdeh was inaugurated in the center of Yerevan in 2016 in a ceremony attended by then President Serzh Sarkisian and other senior officials. It drew a negative reaction from Moscow then.
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“We cannot understand why that statue was placed,” Russian Foreign Ministry representative Maria Zakharova said then, stressing that the Russian government is strongly opposed to “any revival, glorification or other manifestations of Nazism, neo-Nazism and extremism.”
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Moscow later softened its criticism, with Zakharova describing the Armenian authorities’ decision to place Njdeh’s statue in Yerevan as “Armenia’s internal affair.”
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H/T Azatutyun