Armenia will maintain its “strategic and allied” relationship with Russia in these circumstances, Pashinian told the seventh Eastern Economic Forum held in the far eastern city of Vladivostok.
“These are difficult times for our region,” he said, sitting next to Putin during a panel discussion also attended by several other foreign leaders. “There emerge or deepen challenges that have existed for a long time, and these are first and foremost challenges related to security.
“This is connected with the current situation when the attention of the international community and Armenia’s strategic partner, the Russian Federation, is very concentrated on the situation around Ukraine. There are concrete fears that this could lead to a destabilization of the situation in our region.”
“We are worried about forces that think that Russia, which is the key factor of security in our region, is too busy with the Ukraine theme and that they can use this as opportune moment for destabilizing the situation,” Pashinian said in a clear reference to Azerbaijan.
He said that Baku already took advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to launch a full-scale war in Karabakh in September 2020.
“Of course, our relations with Russia were, remain and should be strategic and allied, and we hope that this factor will be key to stability and peace in our region,” added the Armenian leader.
The Karabakh issue was high on the agenda of Putin’s separate meeting with Pashinian held on the sidelines of the Vladivostok forum later in the day. Pashinian said at the start of the meeting that they will discuss “ensuring security in Nagorno-Karabakh.” He praised Russian peacekeepers deployed in Karabakh following a Russian-brokered truce that stopped the 2020 war.
In his opening remarks released by the Kremlin, Putin singled out economic issues, notably a sharp increase in Russian-Armenian trade registered in the first half of this year despite the Western economic sanctions against Moscow.
“The circle of our companies and people interacting with each other is expanding,” he noted with satisfaction.
The two leaders held four phone calls last month. They spoke twice in the space of a week in early August amid an upsurge of violence in Karabakh.
Putin also spoke with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev by phone on September 3.