Russia and Armenia have continued to deepen their already close relationship since the dramatic regime change in Yerevan, a senior Russian diplomat said in a newspaper interview published on Monday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin played down the impact on bilateral ties of what he described as continuing political instability in the South Caucasus state.
“You know that after the political changes in Armenia the traditionally intensive Russian-Armenian dialogue continued at the highest and high levels,” Karasin told the Moscow daily “Izvestia.” “In a matter of months there were three meetings between Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin and two meetings with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Our leaders spoke by phone for several times.”
“We see the main political result of these contacts in the confirmation of the unchanged policy of further strengthening Russian-Armenian allied relations in both the bilateral format and within the framework of common integration structures: the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and the CIS.”
“Despite the continuation of certain internal political instability in Armenia, a systematic joint effort is underway in concrete directions of [Russian-Armenian] cooperation,” added Karasin.
As a lawmaker opposed to the administration of President Serzh Sarkisian, Pashinian was very critical of Armenia’s membership in the Russian-led blocs. But he swiftly ruled out any change in the country’s traditional foreign policy orientation after launching mass protests that forced Sarkisian into resignation in late April. Meeting with Putin in Moscow in June, the 43-year-old premier pledged to make Russian-Armenian ties even “more special.”
However, the new Armenian authorities subsequently provoked a rare diplomatic dispute with Moscow when they prosecuted former President Robert Kocharian and the CSTO’s current secretary general, Yuri Khachaturov, on charges stemming from the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denounced the criminal cases as politically motivated. For his part, Putin made a point of telephoning Kocharian to congratulate him on his 64th birthday anniversary in late August.
Pashinian downplayed the Russian moves before again visiting Moscow and meeting Putin on September 8. He declared after those talks that relations between the two nations are “brilliant.”