President Vladimir Putin of Russia (right) greets his Armenian counterpart, Vahagn Khachatryan on June 18 in St. Petersburg, Russia
Armenia’s President Vahagn Khachatryan said on Saturday that he was aware that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had a proposal to end the 2020 Artsakh War on October 19 less than a month after it erupted and less than a month before it ended.
Khachatryan made the remarks during a meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg, according to the official transcript of the meeting publicized by the Kremlin.
“In fact, we wanted to put an to it [hostilities] early. Somehow end the [2020 Artsakh] war, and I am aware of your efforts [to that end]. You had the opportunity on October 19 [2020]—we spoke about this with [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergei Viktorovich [Lavrov] when he was in Yerevan. But it so happened that it ended on November 9 [2020]. More important, however, is that the war stopped,” Khachatryan told Putin after thank the Russian president for his attempts to stabilize the situation and his continued alliance with Armenia.
“And after that, your efforts to ensure that no hostilities take place is very important, so that the agreements between you, the Prime Minister [of Armenia] and the President [of Azerbaijan] are actually fulfilled and observed,” added Khachatryan.
The official readout of the meeting from Khachatryan’s office does not include this portion of the quote.
The president is representing Armenia at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum—an event, which has been taking place for 25 years, according to Putin.
During a meeting with representatives of the Russian Armenian community on Friday, Khachatryan made another puzzling statement, saying that while visiting Armenia, the Russian foreign minister had admitted that Moscow had not fulfilled its obligations in Parukh, referring to the Armenian village in Artsakh’s Askeran region, which was invaded in March by Azerbaijani forces, which breached the line-of-contact that was under the command of the Russian peacekeeping forces.