The Russian Federation has worked and continues to work to achieve normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Russian Ambassador to Yerevan, Sergei Kopyrkin, stated this on Friday, January 19.
“Russia is firmly committed to providing the maximum possible, required assistance to this process. Of course, it’s up to the parties (Armenia and Azerbaijan. – Ed.), this is their sovereign issue,” he said in a conversation with “RIA News”.
In addition, the ambassador also noted the special importance of the special trilateral structures created, in which Moscow actively participates in order to bring Yerevan and Baku closer together.
As Kopyrkin emphasized, a peaceful and prosperous region of the South Caucasus is in Russia’s interests.
Earlier, on January 13, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan invited Azerbaijan to sign an agreement on mutual arms control. He pointed out that so far the two countries cannot agree on the issue of concluding a peace treaty.
Prior to this, on January 4, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan, Head of the Department of the Presidential Administration for Foreign Policy, Hikmet Hajiyev, said that significant progress had been made between Baku and Yerevan on the text of the peace treaty, but several unresolved issues still remained. In his opinion, there are now no serious obstacles to concluding a peace agreement.
In mid-December, Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Ali Asadov approved the regulations on organizing and holding working meetings between the Azerbaijani and Armenian commissions on the delimitation of the border between the two countries. At the same time, Pashinyan admitted that Baku and Yerevan could sign a peace agreement in the near future if Azerbaijan confirms the principles and agreements already agreed upon by the leaders of both states.
On October 5, Pashinyan signed a declaration recognizing the borders of Azerbaijan. It also included Nagorno-Karabakh. This happened after the conflict escalated in 2023, when the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense on September 19, as a result of anti-terrorism measures, took control of Nagorno-Karabakh and demanded the complete withdrawal of Armenian military personnel from there.
The next day, the parties agreed on a complete cessation of hostilities. At the end of September, the leader of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Samvel Shahramanyan signed a decree according to which it ceased to exist on January 1, 2024.
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