Official website of the President of Russia

Документ   /

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Prime Minister,

I would like to welcome you again – this time to our bilateral meeting. I would like to thank you for agreeing to come to Moscow today.

I believe that indeed, despite the problems you mentioned, which remain outstanding, I hope we will still be able to come to terms on the remaining problems including the humanitarian issues. I think that in general this meeting has been useful for determining the future of the region and the development of relations in the region, primarily between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

I will say that we have certainly had and will have allied relations in all respects and we are close partners in many international organisations.

However, today we spoke at length about the economy. I would like to mention in this context that despite the complicated year and despite all the difficulties, we still increased our trade by almost 4 percent, 3.9 percent in January-October, 2020.

All this makes it possible to hope that as the settlement of the situation around Nagorno-Karabakh moves forward, we will make decisions that will definitely benefit the Armenian people, the Armenian state and our bilateral ties.

Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan: Thank you, Mr President.

Today, we actually spent the whole day together. For over four hours, we talked in a trilateral format, and I am happy that after these talks, we have at least some results, and these results are important.

As I have said, I am confident that the implementation of the agreements formulated in our joint Statement can seriously change the economic potential of our region and substantially enhance its investment appeal.

However, as I also said, I think these economic issues are being complicated by the lack of progress on humanitarian matters. And, of course, as I said, the most sensitive issues for us and I think for all of us, are humanitarian matters linked with the prisoners of war, missing people, and the exchange of bodies. I would like to thank you for upholding and supporting this position.

Of course, your personal contribution to the peace process has always been very tangible and is particularly special now, after the relevant events. I hope relations between Armenia and Russia will become deeper against the backdrop of these events. Russia has been and remains our main strategic ally in the security sphere. Of course, we still need to discuss not only the future of our region but also the agenda of our bilateral ties.

I am happy to have this meeting and this opportunity to discuss everything today.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you.

<…>