Putin receives the Armenian prime minister after recent strained relations
Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Wednesday, the Kremlin said, after Yerevan distanced herself for months from Moscow.
The failure of Russian peacekeepers to intervene during last year’s blitzkrieg offensive to retake Nagorno-Karabakh angered Pashinyan, which has a traditional alliance with Moscow.
Putin told Pashinyan, who is visiting Moscow for the Eurasian Economic Union summit, according to a video released by the Kremlin, that “in terms of our bilateral relations, they are developing with great success”.
The talks took place five months after Armenia joined the ICC, obliging it to arrest Putin if he sets foot on Armenian soil.
“We always, first and foremost, pay attention to economic cooperation,” Putin said, without mentioning the tension in relations between the two countries.
Pashinyan has for months made sharp criticism of relations between Armenia and Russia, visiting Moscow for the first time after the estrangement.
Moscow has accused the small mountainous nation of trying to break their decades-old partnership.
Armenia boycotted a summit of a Moscow-led security alliance at the end of 2023 over what Pashinyan described at the time as the bloc’s failure to meet its security commitments.
