It is exempt, i.e. immediately subject to the Holy See (notably the Roman Congregation for the Oriental Churches), not part of any ecclesiastical province.

Between 1720 and 1760 large communities of Armenian Catholic refugees from Turkey and Persia settled in the territory of the North Caucasus.

In 1848 the Diocese of Tiraspol was created with headquarters in Saratov, to which the Armenian Catholic parishes were added in Russian territory as a dean.

[3] In 1909 the pope appointed Sarkis Der Aprahamian as apostolic administrator for Armenian Catholics, as a formal part of Artvin's non-existent eparchy.

After the end of communism the archeparchy was not revived - although it was not suppressed, its cathedral of the Assumption of Mary was delivered by the Government to the Armenian Apostolic Church and its territory incorporated into the Ordinariate.

In Russia, the faithful of the Armenian Catholic Church live mainly in the southern regions of the country and in large cities: Pskov, Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Sochi, Irkutsk, Omsk, Ulan Ude and Chita.