The talks followed Putin’s collective meeting with the prime ministers of several ex-Soviet states who held a regular session in the Russian city of Sochi.
“I am very pleased to have the opportunity on the sidelines of today's event to once again talk about the current situation in bilateral terms and in regional areas, which we spoke about in such detail at the previous meeting in Moscow,” Putin told Pashinian in his short opening remarks.
Pashinian said, for his part, that they will discuss the “tense humanitarian situation” in Nagorno-Karabakh resulting from Azerbaijan’s continuing blockade of the Lachin corridor.
“By the way, I must emphasize that now food deliveries to Nagorno-Karabakh are carried out with the help of Russian peacekeepers, and this is a limited amount of food,” he said.
The Kremlin and the Armenian government’s press office did not report any details of their ensuing conversation.
Putin held separate and trilateral meetings with Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Moscow on May 25. The talks focused on the restoration of transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan envisaged by a Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the 2020 war in Karabakh.
The deputy prime ministers of the three states met in Moscow on June 2 to try to settle what Putin called “purely technical” issues hampering the opening of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border to commercial traffic. According to an Armenian government statement, they made “substantial progress” on the functioning of a railway that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s Syunik province.
Aliyev and Pashinian met again in Moldova’s capital Chisinau on June 1 for further discussions of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty sought by Baku. European Union chief Charles Michel mediated the talks together with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
In was announced in Chisinau that the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers will start a new round of negotiations in Washington on June 12 in preparation for yet another Aliyev-Pashinian encounter which Michel will host in July. The Washington talks were delayed this week for unknown reasons.
Russia has been very critical of the Western peace efforts. In a televised interview aired on Friday, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin repeated Moscow’s claims that the United States is using the Karabakh conflict to try to drive Russia out of the South Caucasus. He also accused Washington of trying to “subjugate Russia’s partners and allies in a neo-colonial style.”