TIANJIN, China (Azatutyun) — Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met in China on Sunday, August 31, for what were their first face-to-face talks held in almost a year.
“We haven’t seen each other in a long time,” Putin told Pashinyan at the beginning of the talks held on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit held in the Chinese city of Tianjin.
“Many issues have accumulated: bilateral, regional and international ones,” he said. “I hope that our meeting today, as it usually happens when we meet, will be useful and informative.”
For his part, Pashinyan praised the “very active dialogue between our brotherly countries.” Neither side reported afterwards details of their meeting. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said only that it was “very good.” The two leaders previously met in a one-on-one format in Moscow last October amid heightened tensions between Moscow and Yerevan.
Their latest conversation came less than a month after Pashinyan pledged to let the United States administer a transit corridor for Azerbaijan, which would pass through Armenia’s strategic Syunik region, during White House talks with US President Donald Trump and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
Although the deal is seen by analysts as another blow to Russian presence in Armenia, Russia’s public reaction to it has been cautious so far. Moscow has said that it must not be at odds with Armenia’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a Russian-led trade bloc, and the presence of Russian border guards along the Armenian-Iranian border.
