Russian, Armenian FMs Meet Again

The Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani ministers were scheduled to meet in Moscow last December. Yerevan canceled the meeting in protest against Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin corridor.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry said Mirzoyan again raised the issue with Lavrov and “emphasized the need to lift the blockade of the Lachin corridor.”

Armenian leaders have accused the Russian peacekeepers of doing little to restore traffic through the sole road connecting Armenia to Karabakh. Russian officials have strongly denied that.

Mirzoyan was also reported to brief Lavrov on the earlier fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border which left at least seven soldiers from both sides dead. He described the deadly clash as “yet another manifestation of Azerbaijan’s aggressive policy.”

The two ministers held fresh talks amid unprecedented friction between their countries. It stems in large measure from what Yerevan sees as Moscow’s reluctance to support its main regional in the protracted conflict with Azerbaijan.

The rift deepened further late last month after Armenia’s Constitutional Court gave the green light for parliamentary ratification of the International Criminal Court’s founding treaty. The ruling followed an arrest warrant issued by the ICC for Russian President Vladimir Putin over war crimes allegedly committed by Russia in Ukraine.