Vance did not issue a statement or comment on the meeting on social media as of Friday afternoon. Pashinian wrote on Facebook, meanwhile, that their conversation was “introductory” and “good.”
In a separate, unusually short statement, Pashinian’s press office said the two men discussed U.S.-Armenian relations and unspecified issues on the “regional agenda.” It released a single photograph of them standing in front of Vance’s office desk at the White House.
The office, which normally releases videos of Pashinian’s talks with foreign relations, publicized no such footage this time around.
The main declared purpose of Pashinian’s visit to the U.S. capital was to attend the annual International Religious Freedom Summit held there. Among the few Armenian officials accompanying him on the trip was Arsen Torosian, a senior lawmaker and self-confessed atheist. While in Washington, Pashinian also met with a group of Armenian Americans, several U.S. lawmakers and representatives of U.S. think-tanks.
Armenian opposition figures and media commentators questioned the wisdom of the trip involving such an itinerary. Some of them dismissed it as a hapless attempt to forge ties with the new U.S. administration of President Donald Trump whose top foreign policy priorities do not seem to include the South Caucasus.
Pashinian’s meeting with Vance left a “bleak impression” on Hakob Badalian, an Armenian political analyst. He said it was apparently organized at the last minute and did not look like an official or substantive negotiation.
“This really raises a lot of questions about both the meeting and its effectiveness,” Badalian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, adding that Pashinian’s government still has a long way to go in establishing a working relationship with the Trump administration.
The government has been seeking to deepen ties with the United States and the European Union amid a widening rift with Russia, Armenia’s longtime ally. Just days before Trump’s inauguration, outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan a document that upgraded U.S.-Armenian relations to “strategic partnership.” Trump administration officials have not yet commented on that document or broader ties with Yerevan.