Putin and Pashinyan Meet in Moscow

MOSCOW — Russian-Armenian relations are “developing very successfully,” Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said late on Wednesday when he met with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol in Moscow.

Putin pointed to Russia’s soaring trade with Armenia in his opening remarks at the talks held following a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) summit.

“Armenia’s trade with the [other countries of the] Eurasian Economic Union has increased 14 times [since 2015,]” he said. “As for bilateral relations, they are also developing very successfully. We always first of all pay attention to economic cooperation.”

Russian-Armenian trade, he went on, reached a record level of more than $7 billion last year. Its rapid growth was driven in large measure by Armenia’s re-export of Western-manufactured goods to Russia.

“Obviously there are issues related to not only to the rising trade. There are issues concerning security in the region. We won’t talk about them in detail in an open format now. But this is an opportunity to talk about the whole scope of our relations, including regional security issues, on the sidelines of the EEU meeting,” added Putin.

“We last met in December last year. Since then, issues that need to be discussed have accumulated,” Pashinyan said, for his part.

The tete-a-tete meeting continued behind the closed doors. No concrete agreements were announced by the two sides right after it.