President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Friday called Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to brief him about his meeting with Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, earlier this week in Baku.
“The President of Russia informed the Prime Minister of Armenia on his impressions about his Azerbaijan visit last week, for which Prime Minister Pashinyan thanked President Putin,” a brief statement from Pashinyan’s press office said.
Pashinyan and Putin agreed to meet on an upcoming appropriate occasion to discuss issues of the Armenia-Russia bilateral agenda, the statement added.
Putin announced Monday after meeting with Aliyev in Baku that Russia is ready to support peace negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In the readout of the telephone conversation with Pashinyan, the Kremlin said that Putin reiterated the statements he made in Baku.
According to the Kremlin, Pashinyan and Putin discussed the issues related to the normalization of the Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, given Putin’s latest trip to Azerbaijan where he met with President Aliyev.
“The Russian side expressed readiness to further support Armenia and Azerbaijan in advancing the development of the peace treaty, border delimitation and demarcation, as well as unblocking of transport-logistic connections,” the Kremlin said.
“The positive dynamics of the trade-economic partnership was highlighted during an exchange of views about the bilateral agenda. An agreement to continue contacts was made,” the Kremlin statement added.
Photographs published in Azerbaijani and Russian media showed Putin and Aliyev embracing one another, essentially imparting friendly relations between the two leaders, as Moscow and Yerevan continue to escalate their diplomatic sparring.
Ahead of the Putin-Aliyev talks in Baku, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Yerevan of sabotaging the effort to unblock transport routes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, especially a road in the Syunik Province that will connect to Nakhichevan.
“Unfortunately, it is the Armenian leadership that is sabotaging the agreement signed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan when it comes to transit routes passing through the Syunik region of Armenia. It is difficult to understand the meaning of such a position. I am sure that the foundation laid within the framework of tripartite documents remains fully relevant,” Lavrov said in an interview with Russia’s Channel One.
Lavrov’s comments, which escalated tensions between Moscow and Yerevan, were part of a broader interview that aired on Russia’s Channel One, yet only the portion about Armenia was highlighted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official website to coincide with the Putin-Aliyev meeting.
Yerevan hit back by saying that Lavrov’s accusation “calls into question the constructive engagement of the Russian Federation in the normalization process of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
The Russian foreign ministry on Thursday blasted Yerevan for criticizing Lavrov, saying the Armenian’s foreign ministry’s response to the Russian foreign minister’s remarks is another example of Yerevan’s policy of blaming others for its own mistakes.
The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused Yerevan of dropping the agreements reached on the transportation routes “at the behest of the West.”
