YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met with Russia’s visiting Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk on Friday, December 15, one day after Moscow accused Yerevan of not complying with a Russian-brokered agreement to open the Armenian-Azerbaijani border to travel and commerce.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on December 14 also warned Pashinyan’s administration against walking away from this and other agreements that were brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin during and after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“In the absence of a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan, we consider attempts to revoke these important documents extremely dangerous,” the ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said in a statement. “Such a step would inevitably result in serious risks, primarily for Armenia itself.”
Yerevan cannot manage those risks “with the help of Western pseudo-intermediaries,” Zakharova warned. She went on to deplore “a whole series of actions by Yerevan due to which it was not possible to fully implement the trilateral agreements.”
“In particular, for many months the Armenian side has been blocking the start of work to restore railway communication between Azerbaijan and Armenia, refusing to comply with the provisions of paragraph 9 of the high-level statement of November 9, 2020,” she said.
The paragraph stipulates that Russian border guards stationed in Armenia will “control” the movement of people, vehicles and goods between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenian territory. A senior Armenian official said earlier this year that this only allows them to “monitor” the commercial traffic, rather than escort it, let alone be involved in border controls.
