Official Russian and Armenian sources did not mention the intensifying war in their statements on Putin’s call with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
The Kremlin said they continued to discuss “practical aspects” of implementing Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements brokered by Moscow during and after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Those include “issues of ensuring security and stability on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border,” it said without elaborating.
Pashinian’s press office reported, for its part, that the two leaders also discussed Russian-Armenian relations as well as unspecified “issues related to activities” of Russian-led alliances of former Soviet republics.
According to a separate statement released by the Kremlin, Putin talked to Aliyev “in continuation” of their meeting held in Moscow on February 22 two days before Russia launched a full-scale military attack on Ukraine.
At that meeting, they signed a joint declaration on “allied cooperation” between their nations. The declaration says, among other things, that Russia and Azerbaijan will avoid “any actions directed against each other” and could consider “providing each other with military assistance.”
Putin said after the talks that he and Aliyev also agreed to closely cooperate in implementing the Russian-brokered agreements on the opening of economic and transport links between Azerbaijan and Armenia and the demarcation of their long border. Moscow will keep helping Baku and Yerevan to settle their “border issues” and other “acute problems,” added the Russian leader.
The Russian ambassador to Armenia, Sergei Kopyrkin, likewise said on Saturday that Moscow will use its close ties with the two South Caucasus nations to prevent fresh fighting on the border.
“And of course, it is important for us that Armenia, the Armenian people feel safe,” Kopyrkin told the Armenpress news agency. “The guarantee for this is our allied relations and our countries’ policy to deepen and strengthen them.”
In their latest phone call, Aliyev and Putin also discussed the dramatic developments in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said earlier on Saturday that Aliyev and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have offered to help organize talks between Russia and Ukraine. Although Zelenskiy welcomed the offer, hopes for an immediate move toward talks appeared dim.
