Azernews.Az

YEREVAN – Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan says Russian authorities have been told to stop encouraging and helping families in Armenia to migrate to Russia, Radio Liberty's Armenian Service reports.

Sargsyan was referring on Friday to the Russian government's Compatriots program, which offers employment, accommodation, and financial benefits to married residents of other former Soviet republics willing to settle in Russia. It is designed to address the country's serious demographic problems.

The Russian Federal Migration Service (FSM) began operating the program in Armenia in 2009 and has reportedly attracted hundreds of Armenian families since then.

Its activities are sparking a growing uproar from local opposition politicians, public figures, and media worried about the continuing outflow of people from Armenia. Some of them have demanded that the authorities in Yerevan ban the FSM scheme in Armenia.

Prime Minister Sargsyan said Armenian authorities shared those concerns. He said President Serzh Sargsyan instructed him to raise the matter at a recent meeting of a Russian-Armenian intergovernmental commission on bilateral cooperation that was held in the southern Russian city of Rostov-na-Donu.

"We brought our Russian partners' attention to the fact that this program must not be implemented in the Republic of Armenia with those standards," Tigran Sargsyan said. "This issue will be the subject of intergovernmental discussions."

Armenia had about 4 million residents when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. At least one-quarter of its population has since emigrated in search of employment abroad.