A senior official in Yerevan insisted on Thursday that Armenia’s relations with the United States will not deteriorate after Washington’s negative reaction to the deployment of Armenian military personnel to Syria.

Commenting on the dispatch of 83 Armenian army medics, sappers and other servicemen to Syria last week, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday that it does not support “any engagement with Syrian military forces” or “any cooperation between Armenia and Russia for this mission.”

“Russia has partnered with the Assad regime to slaughter civilians and trigger a humanitarian catastrophe,” it said in a statement.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry said later on Wednesday that it “took note of the statement.” A ministry spokeswoman, Anna Naghdalian, repeated the official line that the Armenian deployment is “purely humanitarian.”

Ruben Rubinian, the pro-government chairman of the Armenian parliament committee on foreign relations, downplayed the U.S. reaction when he spoke to journalists the following day.

“I don’t think that the statement by the U.S. State Department was very sharp,” he said. “I think that our American partners understand the logic of our policy and our motives.”

“Sending a team of specialists to Syria is very important for us because it is first of all aimed at ensuring the physical security of our [ethnic Armenian] compatriots living there and second of all the security of peoples living in Syria. So this was not a geopolitical or political or military move. This is a purely humanitarian move,” added Rubinian.

The official announcement of the deployment coincided with talks held by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu and his Armenian counterpart Davit Tonoyan in Moscow on February 8. Shoygu thanked Yerevan for its “humanitarian assistance” to Syria.

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