Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian returned to Yerevan late on Thursday after paying a one-day working visit to Moscow that apparently did not include a meeting with his Russian counterpart.
Despite media expectations that Sarkisian would also meet with Vladimir Putin while visiting the Russian capital, no information about any such meeting was released by either the Armenian president’s office or the Kremlin administration as of Friday morning.
Sarkisian’s administration did not say anything about a possible meeting of the two leaders ahead of the Armenian president’s trip. According to its latest report, while in Moscow, Sarkisian, who also heads Armenia’s chess federation, only attended a chess tournament held in memory of Soviet-Armenian grandmaster Tigran Petrosian, the ninth world chess champion.
According to the Russian president’s press office, on Thursday Putin had quite a busy schedule that also included a meeting with members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Eduard Sharmazanov, a deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament, represented Armenia at that meeting.
Russia is Armenia’s top political and military ally. In 2015 Armenia intends to join the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union that also includes Belarus and Kazakhstan. Sarkisian signed the accession treaty in the presence of President Putin and the leaders of Belarus and Kazakhstan during the emerging trade bloc’s summit in Minsk on October 10.