Lapshin: RyanAir’s entry into Armenia’s aviation market ‘was negotiated with former government'

Alexander Lapshin, the Russian-Azerbaijani blogger who was convicted and later pardoned in Azerbaijan over a controversial trip to the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) Republic, has commented upon RyanAir’s entry into the aviation market of Armenia.

According to him, the negotiations with Europe’s biggest budget airline were initiated with the former authorities back in 2015 (when third President Serzh Sargsyan was still at the helm of state).

“[Armenian Prime Minister Nikol] Pashinyan told me that personally in the summer 2018 - more than a year ago from now, ” he says on a public post on Facebook, noting that the Irish company had promised to strike a deal  provided the government agreed to incur the necessary costs.

The blogger notes that simultaneous negotiations were being conducted also with Wizzair.

Meantime he admits that the deal was repealed after the former authorities rejected the proposal for budgetary allocations to cover the per passenger costs (amounting to an equiovalent of $76).

“RyanAir immediately agreed to launch the flights after over $5 million were spent from from Armenia’s [State] Budget,” Lapshin says, adding that Director of the Civil Aviation Committee Tatevik Revazyan “had absolutely no contribution to the deal.”

“It was solely and exclusively Pashinyan’s decision, and the money in question constitutes budgetary sums,” reads the blogger’s post.