He seemed to rule out a unilateral termination a 30-year management contract signed with Russia's state-owned railway monopoly Russian Railways (RZhD) in 2008.
“Scrapping a contract is always a bad thing,” he told reporters. “We should come to an agreement. Our interstate relations, including our personal relations, do not allow us to go that way. I see no point in doing that. On the contrary, our relations allow us to talk in a friendly, amicable manner.”
Pashinian declared on February 13 that the contract should be terminated because it discourages Turkey and Azerbaijan from using a much larger section of Armenian territory for transit purposes in the near future. The network should be run by another country that has “friendly relations with both Russia and Armenia,” he said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed Pashinian’s statement as “bizarre” and “not acceptable.” Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council went farther, saying that the network could “collapse overnight” if Yerevan tries to take it away from the Russians.
Pashinian downplayed the negative Russian reaction, saying that there is a “certain understanding” in what he described as ongoing Russian-Armenian discussions on the matter.
“There is nothing in what we said that is directed against Russia,” he said. “We simply share with our partners [our view] that in this situation Armenia is losing its competitive advantages. We have no other motivation, and I hope we will be able to reach concrete solutions.”
Pashinian did not clarify whether this means Moscow does not mind, in principle, ceding control of the Armenian railways. Nor did he give any details of the talks mentioned by him.
The only contacts reported by the governments of the two countries so far concern the restoration of two short sections of the Armenia railways leading to the Azerbaijani and Turkish borders. Pashinian repeatedly urged Moscow late last year to repair them. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk indicated its readiness to do that on February 12.
Armenia’s Deputy Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures Armen Simonian and Russia’s Deputy Transport Minister Dmitry Zverev discussed the repairs in Yerevan late last week. They did not announce concrete agreements after the talks.