The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday also warned Pashinian’s administration against walking away from this and other agreements that were brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin during and after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“In the absence of a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan, we consider attempts to revoke these important documents extremely dangerous,” the ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said in a statement. “Such a step would inevitably result in serious risks, primarily for Armenia itself.”
Yerevan cannot manage those risks “with the help of Western pseudo-intermediaries,” Zakharova warned. She went on to deplore “a whole series of actions by Yerevan due to which it was not possible to fully implement the trilateral agreements.”
“In particular, for many months the Armenian side has been blocking the start of work to restore railway communication between Azerbaijan and Armenia, refusing to comply with the provisions of paragraph 9 of the high-level statement of November 9, 2020,” she said.
The paragraph stipulates that Russian border guards stationed in Armenia will “control” the movement of people, vehicles and goods between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenian territory. A senior Armenian official said earlier this year that this only allows them to “monitor” the commercial traffic, rather than escort it, let alone be involved in border controls.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, left, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan attend a trilateral meeting in Moscow, May 25, 2023.
The Azerbaijani government is understood to have demanded that the special transport link for Nakhichevan be exempt from Armenian border controls. Armenia has repeatedly ruled out that.
The issue was high on the agenda of Pashinian’s meeting with Overchuk, who is also a co-chair of a Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani task force dealing with planned transport links. The Armenian premier was cited by his press office as telling Overchuk that Yerevan remains committed to “unblocking regional transport infrastructure based on the principles of sovereignty, jurisdiction, equality and reciprocity.”
A statement by the office gave no other details of their talks. Mher Grigorian, an Armenian deputy premier and another co-chair of the trilateral commission, was also in attendance.
The Sputnik news agency quoted Overchuk as saying later on Friday that the commission has worked out a “document” on the Armenian-Azerbaijani rail link which is “in a high degree of readiness" for signing. He did not say what exactly keeps the sides from signing it and whether that could happen anytime soon. Nor did he criticize Yerevan in that regard.
Overchuk spoke after co-chairing with Grigorian a regular session of a separate Russian-Armenian intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation.
The main purpose of the 2020 agreement cited by Zakharova was to stop fighting in Karabakh and prevent new hostilities. The deal also called for the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh and gave them control over the Lachin corridor connecting the region to Armenia.
The peacekeepers did not push back when Baku disrupted commercial and humanitarian traffic through the corridor in December 2022 and set up a checkpoint there in April in breach of the ceasefire. Nor did they intervene when the Azerbaijani army went on the offensive in Karabakh on September 19, forcing its practically entire population to flee to Armenia.
Nagorno-Karabakh - Ethnic Armenians pass through a Russian checkpooint as they flee Karabakh for Armenia, 26 September 2023.
Unlike the European Union and the United States, Russia did not even denounce the offensive. Pashinian and other Armenian leaders have said that Moscow’s stance constituted an even more serious violation of the truce accord.
Zakharova’s statement essentially blamed Armenia for the assault, backing Azerbaijani allegations that it supplied weapons to Karabakh through Lachin and did not withdraw all Armenian troops from the disputed territory. Yerevan has strongly denied the allegations that were never publicly echoed by the Russian peacekeepers.
Zakharova also repeated Russian claims that Pashinian sealed the fate of the Karabakh Armenians by recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh during talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev organized by the EU in October 2022 and May 2022. Putin likewise said on Thursday Karabakh was “abandoned” by Armenia, not Russia.
Moscow’s latest warning to Yerevan came amid unprecedented tensions between the two longtime allies and ongoing Western efforts to broker an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. In particular, the U.S. is now trying to agree a new date for a meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers which was due to take place in Washington on November 20. Baku cancelled the meeting, citing what it called pro-Armenian statements made by a senior U.S. official.