Putin Again Talks To Armenian, Azeri Leaders

RUSSIA - Personnel and equipment of a Russian Emergencies Ministry unit is examined at the Noginsk Rescue Center before being sent to Nagorno-Karabakh as part of another humanitarian mission, November 23, 2020

Russian President Vladimir Putin has again telephoned the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to discuss the implementation of a Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

High-level Russian government delegations visited Yerevan and Baku for the same purpose at the weekend. They comprised two Russian deputy prime ministers as well as Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that during the separate phone calls Putin held detailed discussions with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on the results of the visits.

“They looked into modalities of the work of Russian peacekeepers in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and further steps to provide humanitarian assistance to the population,” it added in a statement.

The three leaders also “touched upon issues of economic interaction and unblocking of transport links in the region,” according to the statement. No other details were reported.

The Armenian-Azerbaijani truce accord brokered by Putin on November 9 commits the conflicting parties to reopening their borders for commercial traffic. But it sets no time frames for that.

Putin touted the Russian mediation efforts when he addressed the newly appointed ambassadors of more than a dozen foreign states in Moscow on Tuesday. He reiterated that those efforts are “creating prerequisites for a long-term and full-fledged resolution” of the Karabakh conflict.