In its readout of the call, the Kremlin said two men spoke about the “preparation of the Azerbaijani-Armenian peace treaty, delimitation and demarcation of the border and unblocking of transport communications between the two states.”
“In this regard, the Russian side confirmed its readiness to continue to provide all possible assistance to Baku and Yerevan in developing appropriate mutually acceptable solutions,” it added without elaborating.
Putin first made the offer when he met with Aliyev in Baku on August 19. He discussed it with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian by phone four days later.
Pashinian’s reaction to it is still not known. Yerevan essentially rejected similar Russian initiatives earlier this year amid its mounting tensions with Moscow.
According to the Azerbaijani government-linked news agency APA, Putin and Aliyev on Wednesday “exchanged views” on a land corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s strategic Syunik region.
A Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh commits Armenia to “guarantee the security of transport links” between Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan. It also stipulates that Russian border guards will “control” the movement of people, vehicles and goods through Syunik.
Speaking to Russian state television during Putin’s trip to Baku, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Yerevan of “sabotaging” those agreements. The Armenian Foreign Ministry hit back at Lavrov, saying that he “cannot fail to see that there is not a single key point of that [2020 ceasefire] statement that has not been irrevocably violated.”
The ministry seemed to allude to Russia’s failure to prevent or thwart Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military operation that restored Azerbaijani control over Karabakh and displaced its ethnic Armenian population. Also, Russian peacekeepers deployed in Karabakh did not intervene after Baku blocked in November 2022 the Lachin corridor connecting the region to Armenia.
Many in Armenia feel that the Azerbaijani offensive and the resulting exodus of the Karabakh Armenians effectively invalidated the truce accord and subsequent Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, insisted on Wednesday that those agreements remain the only viable framework for a comprehensive resolution of the conflict.
“Attempts to question them are extremely dangerous and could create a vacuum of mutual obligations between the parties in the context of their still unsettled bilateral relations,” Zakharova said in an apparent warning to Yerevan.
