Imported animations doesn't work on skeletal mesh they were created with

Hi everyone, i'm new to Unity and i'm trying to wrap my head around importing skeletal mesh and animations for it separately. Mesh and anims are done in Blender and exported to FBX.

From what i've thought and read - following workflow was in my mind.

1) Import skeletal mesh without animations
2) Import animations for the same skeleton
3) Since skeleton is the same - animations just work in Unity

As you may have guessed, 3 is where i'm stuck.
After importing both - i'm dragging mesh on to animation preview, but mesh just lies flat in rest pose and animations aren't affecting it.


On the Rig tab of imported animation Avatar Definition is set to Copy From Other Avatar, and previously mesh's imported avatar is selected.

Note: despite character being humanoid - i'm trying to use Generic rig for the sake of learning and being able to import any type of rig.

Mesh and animations that i'm exporting from blender are literally from the same file, I just uncheck mesh and check "baked animations" for the latter.
While exported together with mesh - animation do work, but doing that doesn't look like a correct workflow and still will not solve an issue of adding new animations to already imported characters.

Hoping for advise, thanks!