The two men met there following the World Atomic Week forum in Moscow hosted by Putin and attended by several other heads of state and government.
“Overall, the [Russian-Armenian] relationship is developing, developing progressively and well,” Putin said in his opening remarks at the meeting.
He pointed to Russia’s increased trade with Armenia which reached, according to Russian government data, a new record high of $11.7 billion last year.
“Our relationship is developing in all other areas as well,” Putin went on. “We always have something to talk about, even though we only saw each other recently. But we are nonetheless very happy to see you in Moscow.”
Pashinian also spoke of “systematically” deepening bilateral ties and said he has “a lot to discuss” with Putin. Neither the Kremlin nor the Armenian government reported any details of their ensuing conversation.
Putin and Pashinian previously met on August 31 on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the Chinese city of Tianjin. It was their first face-to-face encounter in almost a year, a fact underscoring lingering tensions between Moscow and Yerevan.
In another sign of those tensions, Russian authorities allowed about 100 Armenians to demonstrate on Thursday outside the Armenian Embassy in Moscow in protest against Pashinian’s visit. The protesters, among them several priests, chanted “Nikol enemy!” and held up posters condemning Pashinian’s controversial efforts to depose the top clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
The Tianjin talks came less than a month after Pashinian pledged to let the United States administer a transit corridor for Azerbaijan during White House talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Although the deal is seen by analysts as another blow to Russian presence in Armenia, Russia’s public reaction to it has been cautious so far.
The issue is believed to have been high on the agenda of Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk’s August 20 visit to Yerevan. Following that visit, Overchuk renewed Moscow’s warnings about severe economic consequences of Yerevan’s declared desire to eventually join the European Union. He reiterated that Armenian exporters would lose their tariff-free access to the Russian market in that case.
Pashinian appeared to defy those warnings when he addressed on September 20 a congress of his Civil Contract party. He said his administration will step up “efforts aimed at Armenia's accession to the European Union.”
According to official statistics, Russia accounted for over 35 percent of Armenia’s foreign trade in the first half of this year, compared with the EU’s 12 percent share.