MOSCOW (Reuters) – Margarita Simonyan, hawkish head of the Russian state broadcaster RT, said on Tuesday that she had been banned from Armenia, along with a senior Russian lawmaker.
“Konstantin Zatulin, who has been a fierce supporter of Armenia for many years, has been banned from entering Armenia by the current leader of Armenia,” Simonyan wrote on Telegram. “Me too, by the way.”
Armenian media reported that Zatulin, who heads a committee in Russia’s lower house on relations with former Soviet states, had been shut out over criticism of the government of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Simonyan, an ethnic Armenian born in Russia, frequently appears on Russian media as a virulently anti-Western commentator, and has frequently accused the Yerevan government of being insufficiently loyal to Moscow.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
