RFE/RL – Pashinian ‘Satisfied’ With Tense Talks With Putin

“We reached concrete understandings in all areas of our agenda, from culture to military-technical cooperation,” he told journalists. “And I assess the visit as very successful.”

Pashinian did not elaborate on those understandings. Official readouts of the talks said nothing about them.

Putin made unusually long and blunt remarks at the start of the meeting at the Kremlin open to the media. In particular, he warned Armenian authorities against disqualifying what he called pro-Russian opposition groups or politicians from the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections. Some of them are currently under arrest “despite holding Russian passports,” Putin said in a clear reference to Samvel Karapetian, a Russian-Armenian billionaire prosecuted after condemning Pashinian’s attempts to depose Catholicos Garegin II.

Pashinian responded by saying that under the Armenian constitution, dual citizens like Karapetian cannot become prime ministers or even hold parliament seats. He suggested on Thursday that Putin was not aware of that constitutional hurdle.

“The Russian president, especially considering the scale of his country and the agenda he is dealing with, could not have gone into details even if he wanted to,” he said. “I think he was not informed about that nuance.”

Karapetian’s opposition movement has emerged in recent months as one of the ruling Civil Contract party’s main challengers. It plans to run in the June 7 polls without including the tycoon on its list of candidates. Pashinian did not say whether this or other major opposition groups could be barred from the contest.

Pashinian’s government has raised opposition fears of such bans by asking the European Union to deploy a “hybrid rapid response team” to Armenia after implicitly alleging Russian “hybrid” threats to the integrity of the electoral process. The EU sent such a mission in Moldova for the parliamentary elections held there last September. Two Moldovan opposition parties deemed pro-Russian were disqualified from the vote won by the former Soviet republic’s pro-Western leadership.

Putin on Wednesday also repeated Russian warnings about economic consequences of Armenia’s possible membership in the European Union sought by Yerevan. He noted that Armenia is heavily dependent on Russia for not only trade but also Russian natural supplied at a significant discount.

The Russian and Armenian leaders also publicly sparred over Pashinian’s decisions to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh and freeze Armenia’s membership in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

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