Wednesday, Putin In Fresh Talks With Sarkisian Russia - President Vladimir Putin (R) meets with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian in Sochi, 23Aug2017. President Vladimir Putin praised Russia's close political, military and economic ties with Armenia as he met with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on Wednesday. Putin started the talks by noting the upcoming 20th anniversary of the signing of a comprehensive Russian-Armenian treaty. "Since then relations between Armenia and Russia as sovereign states have strengthened in the most serious manner," he said. "We maintain an intensive political dialogue, cooperate on a bilateral basis in the areas of economy and security, military affairs." "We actively interact within the framework of international organizations and our integration structures," Putin added in televised remarks. Sarkisian likewise described Russian-Armenian relations as "strategic" and multifaceted. "Our commercial ties are developing intensively," he went on, pointing to a 24 percent rise in bilateral trade recorded by the Armenian government in the first half of this year. Sarkisian also thanked Moscow for helping authorities in Armenia extinguish a massive wildfire that broke out in a nature reserve southeast of Yerevan earlier this month. A Russian water-dropping plane played a major role in the firefighting efforts there. Russia - President Vladimir Putin (R) meets with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian in Sochi, 23Aug2017. Neither president mentioned the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in his opening remarks. A statement on the talks issued by the Kremlin also made no reference to the issue. According to the Armenian presidential press office, Putin and Sarkisian discussed the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute after their meeting continued behind the closed doors. The office gave no details. The two leaders made no public statements after the talks held in the presence of Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov of Russia and Edward Nalbandian of Armenia.Lavrov has been personally involved in international efforts to broker an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal. Putin met with Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev in Sochi late last month. The Karabakh conflict was also on the agenda. Putin hosted the most recent Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Saint-Petersburg in June 2016, two months after four-day hostilities around Karabakh which Moscow helped to halt. The three presidents signaled progress towards a Karabakh settlement right after that meeting. However, the peace process again stalled in the following months. Russia and the two other mediating powers, the United States and France, now hope to organize another Aliyev-Sarkisian meeting this fall. Opposition Mayor Accuses Predecessor Of Corruption . Anush Muradian Armenia - Garik Sargsian (L), mayor of Nor Kyank village, and his lawyer, Rustam Badasian, at a news conference in Yerevan, 23Aug2017 The mayor of an Armenian village affiliated with the opposition Yelk alliance on Wednesday accused the family of his pro-government predecessor of illegally privatizing land that belonged to the local community. Garik Sargsian of Nor Kyank, a village in the southern Ararat province, said he has filed lawsuits in a bid to restore public ownership of the two plots of land. He said they were sold to the wife and the daughter of the former village mayor, Mayis Abrahamian, at a fraction of their market value. The privatization deals were approved by the local council years before Sargsian defeated Abrahamian in a mayoral election held last September. Those decisions were supposedly signed by most members of the council. The 30-year-old mayor, a rare opposition member running a local community in Armenia, and his lawyer, Rustam Badasian, said they suspect that at least some of those signatures were rigged. "With our lawsuits, we are demanding the annulment of these deals whereby communal land was sold," Badasian told a news conference in Yerevan. He said they have also asked the Armenian police to launch a criminal investigation into a possible forgery of the signatures. "We have reasonable suspicions that they are fake because the signatures put by several of the current councilors # under council decisions adopted after November 2016 and before November 2016 clearly do not match each other," explained the lawyer. One council member has already admitted not having signed the privatization deals, he claimed. Abrahamian, who is a member of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), strongly denied the corruption claims, saying that his successor is simply keen to discredit him. He insisted that the land acquisitions were legal and that no signatures were forged. "There was a tender in 2004 and my wife won it and bought that land," Abrahamian told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). "Why is only my wife's name being circulated?" complained the former village chief, who now holds a senior position in the provincial administration. "Other people also bought [village land.] Why isn't he talking about them?" Press Review "Haykakan Zhamanak" says that Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Serzh Sarkisian of Armenia will have "many issues to discuss" when they meet in the Russian city of Sochi on Wednesday. "But since Russia is trying, together with the two other co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, to end the deadlock in Karabakh peace talks, the key topic now is a Sarkisian-Aliyev meeting planned for this autumn," the paper says. "In order for the meeting to take place, the Azerbaijani side should guarantee that it will not walk away from agreements on confidence-building measures in the conflict zone. [Ilham] Aliyev may have given such guarantees at his [recent] meeting with Putin [in Sochi.] But of course he may have also not given them. Vladimir Putin will definitely communicate the Azerbaijani president's position to Serzh Sarkisian today." "Aravot" comments on reports that Turkey is seeking to sign a free-trade deal with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Armenia has already made clear through Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharian that Ankara cannot reach such a deal without Yerevan's consent. Kocharian also pointed in that regard to the long-running Turkish economic blockade of Armenia. "Turkey is making yet another move aimed at deepening its relations with Moscow," writes the paper. "These are not easy times for Ankara, and the Turkish authorities are seeking access to the EEU markets. For its part, Moscow was quite flattered by such a statement from Ankara given its efforts to boost the EEU's clout." "Hraparak" quotes Stepan Grigorian, an Armenian analyst, as suggesting that the Turks are "blackmailing" the European Union with their stated desire to forge closer commercial ties with the Russian-led trade bloc. He believes that Ankara cannot enter into any free-trade agreements with the EEU without scrapping its customs union with the EU. "The Armenian factor is also at play," adds Grigorian. "If Turkey wants to form a free-trade area with the EEU how can it keep the border with Armenia closed? I don't think that this stage Turkey will willingly open the border with Armenia." (Tigran Avetisian) Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2017 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org