MOSCOW, Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Wednesday, the Kremlin said, after Yerevan distanced itself from Russia for months.
Traditionally an ally of Russia, Yerevan has for months criticized Moscow that Russian peacekeepers did not intervene during last year’s Azerbaijani offensive to retake Nagorno-Karabakh.
“As for our bilateral relations, they are developing quite successfully,” Putin told Pashinyan, who was visiting Moscow as part of the Eurasian Economic Union summit, in a video released by the Kremlin.
The talks took place five months after Armenia joined the International Criminal Court (ICC), committing it to arrest Putin if he enters Armenian territory.
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Putin said “we always pay attention to economic cooperation in the first place” and did not mention the tensions.
For months, Pashinyan has made increasingly critical comments about Armenia’s ties to Russia and was in Moscow for the first time since the tensions.
Moscow has accused the small, mountainous country of trying to undermine the decades-long partnership.
Armenia boycotted a Moscow-led security alliance summit in late 2023 over what Pashinyan described as the bloc’s failure to meet its security commitments.
