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On July 17, the Speaker of the RF FA State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin received the RA NA Speaker Ara Babloyan being on an official visit in the Russian Federation.

The Speaker of the RF FA State Duma congratulated Ara Babloyan on being elected in the RA NA Speaker’s post.

“Armenia is a strategic and reliable partner for us,” Vyacheslav Volodin noted. The Speaker of the RF FA State Duma expressed hope that the relations of the parliaments of the two countries will be gradually strengthened and deepened.

Speaking about strengthening of the parliamentary cooperation of the two countries, the RA NA Speaker Ara Babloyan particularly noted: “This year is a jubilee year in the Armenian-Russian centuries-old relations, as we mark the 25^th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation.”

Touching upon the NK problem, the Head of the RA Parliament stated: “On July 4 of this year the Azerbaijani side initiated the next provocation: after April 2016 aggression for the first time Azerbaijan’s military forces used volley fire systems. Azerbaijan, deploying the weapon emplacements near the settlements, used its population as a live shield. We could avoid such provocations, as well as numerous human losses conditioned by that, if Azerbaijan remained faithful to the agreements adopted in 2016 Vienna and Saint Petersburg Summits.”

Talking about the Armenian-Russian cooperation, Ara Babloyan noted that the law prohibiting work with the driver’s licenses given by foreign countries, passed in the RF recently caused great difficulties for the Armenians working in Russia. The RA NA Speaker proposed his colleague to review that approach.

In response to the problem raised by the Head of the RA Parliament, the Speaker of the RF FA State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin noted that the adoption of the law entering restriction of working in the Russian Federation with driver’s licenses of other states had been conditioned by exclusively traffic security, as according to the Speaker of the RF FA State Duma, as a consequence of not knowing Russian the working drivers don’t know the RF traffic rules, as well as cannot make use of the Russian programmes working in the navigation systems. Taking into consideration that the law had already been passed, in his turn Vyacheslav Volodin proposed to affirm by law the Russian in the RA as an official language, like in the countries, for which with the same law exceptions had been designed.

Opposing this proposal, the RA NA Speaker Ara Babloyan has stated that there is no issue of affirming the Russian as an official language on the agenda of the Republic of Armenia. At the same time the Head of the RA Parliament has noticed that in all RA schools the Russian is taught, which in his opinion, fully satisfies with the solution of the problem.

As a result of discussions Vyacheslav Volodin has noted that the Russian side is open for deliberations. An agreement was reached to refer to that issue in the future, finding possible alternative solutions.

The sides also discussed issues concerning the strengthening of cooperation on the international platforms and agreements were reached for the investment of new working formats.