According to the official Armenian readout of the call, Pashinian raised with Putin the “humanitarian crisis” in Karabakh resulting from the four-month blockade.
“In the context of overcoming the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian prime minister emphasized the importance of consistent steps by the Russian peacekeeping mission,” said the statement.
The Kremlin reported that the two leaders “continued the discussion of various aspects of the current situation in Nagorno-Karabakh” and reaffirmed their commitment to Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements brokered by Moscow during and after the 2020 war. It was their fourth phone conversation in two months.
Armenian leaders have repeatedly accused Russian peacekeepers of doing little to unblock the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia. Moscow has rejected the criticism. It has called for an end to the blockade.
Azerbaijan has ignored such calls also made by the West. Its troops tightened the blockade on Mach 25 when they seized a hill overlooking a dirt road that bypasses the blocked section of the Lachin corridor. The Russian peacekeepers accused Baku of violating the 2020 ceasefire.
Putin and Pashinian spoke on Friday eleven days Moscow warned the Armenian parliament against ratifying the International Criminal Court’s founding treaty.
Armenia’s Constitutional Court gave the green light for such ratification on March 24 a week after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin over war crimes allegedly committed by Russia in Ukraine. Pashinian’s domestic critics claimed that he engineered the court ruling in order to further undermine Armenia’s alliance with Russia.
The Kremlin said Putin and Pashinian also “touched upon topical issues of bilateral relations.” It did not elaborate.
Pashinian’s office likewise said that they discussed “Armenian-Russian relations and other developments taking place in them.”