President Vladimir Putin of Russia revealed on Tuesday that he and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met with Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev on the margins of a CIS summit being held in St. Petersburg.
Putin made the remarks at the start of his meeting on Tuesday with Pashinyan, with whom he presumably discussed the now 16-day-long Azerbaijani blockade of the Lachin Corridor.
“We started yesterday and the three of us managed to talk,” Putin said before meeting Pashinyan. “Of course, the main issue is the settlement of the situation in the South Caucasus as a whole, Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, and everything related to Karabakh.”
In his opening statement, Pashinyan told Putin that the Lachin Corridor blockade was a violation of the November 9, 2020 agreement, which was brokered by the Russian leader and stipulated that the Russian peacekeeping forces in Artsakh would guarantee the un-impeded travel on the only road connecting Artsakh to Armenia.
“I want to remind you that, according to the tripartite statement of the president of the Russian Federation, the president of Azerbaijan and the prime minister of Armenia, the Lachin corridor should be under the control of Russian peacekeepers and Azerbaijan guaranteed the unimpeded passage of passengers, cargo and people along the Lachin corridor,” Pashinyan told Putin.
“Now it turns out that the Lachin corridor is not under the control of Russian peacekeepers,” complained Pashinyan. “Of course, I would like to discuss this situation, what options there are.”
Neither the Kremlin nor Pashinyan’s office released a readout of the meeting. Putin also did not elaborate whether Pashinyan and Aliyev reached an agreement during their talk on Monday.
The Kremlin’s spokesperson Demitry Peskov told reporters that the Pashinyan-Aliyev-Putin meeting was not a “full-fledged” one and did not follow the format of previous meetings held by the three leaders.
