In a statement on the phone call, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that deputy parliament speaker Ruben Rubinian, who represents Armenia in the talks, briefed Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin on “the latest developments in the sphere of normalization between Armenia and Turkey.”
“The Russian side confirmed its readiness to continue to facilitate the search for common ground between Yerevan and Ankara because the improvement of Armenian-Turkish relations is an important factor of stability and sustainable development in the South Caucasus,” it said.
“The exchange of views took place in a constructive atmosphere,” added the statement.
The Armenian parliament’s press office released a much shorter readout of the call, saying that Rubinian and Galuzin discussed Russian-Armenian relations and “regional developments.”
The conversation came a week after Rubinian met with his Turkish opposite number, veteran diplomat Serdar Kilic, on the sidelines of an international forum in the Turkish city of Antalya. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan held separate talks there.
Neither side reported further progress towards normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations which Ankara continues to link to more Armenian concessions to Azerbaijan. Rubinian indicated on Monday that Ankara is still dragging its feet over the implementation of a July 2022 agreement to open the Turkish-Armenian border to citizens of third states.
The agreement was reached after four rounds of negotiations held by Rubinian and Kilic. Their first meeting took place in Moscow in January 2022.
Yerevan minimized diplomatic contacts with Moscow in the following months amid a deepening rift between the two longtime allies and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s efforts to reorient Armenia towards the West. In recent weeks, there have been indications that Pashinian now wants to ease the tensions. He will attend on May 9 a military parade in Moscow dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
Armenian media reported last month that Pashinian instructed Armenia’s parliament, Foreign Ministry and other government agencies to unfreeze and intensify contacts with their Russian counterparts. The Kremlin reacted positively to those reports.