At the start of the trilateral meeting Putin told Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian of Armenia and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan that “a lot has been done” since last year’s Moscow-brokered ceasefire that stopped a 44-day Armenian-Azerbaijan war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Unfortunately, not all issues have been settled. I know about tragic incidents at the borders in which people have been killed and wounded on both sides. These are things that require special attention on our part. Strictly speaking, it is for this purpose that we’ve also gathered together today, that is, to avoid such incidents in the future,” Putin said, as quoted by the Kremlin.
The Russian leader said that the absence of large-scale hostilities in the conflict zone was positive in itself.
“It is important that conditions are being created for future normal life,” Putin said, expressing a hope that decisions on the unblocking of transport links will become possible in the near future as a result of the work of a relevant trilateral working group.
“The goal of all our efforts is to create conditions for the revival of the region, for people there to feel secure and be able to engage in economic activities, which will have a favorable impact on the living standards of people in both countries. It also has a great importance to Russia, considering the special nature of relations it has with Armenia and Azerbaijan. For centuries we lived as part of a common state. We have deep historical ties. One would not want these ties to be destroyed. On the contrary, we should seek to restore and maintain them in the future,” Putin said.
In his remarks Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that the incidents in the conflict zone during the past year have not been of a systemic nature. He also said that one point of last year’s ceasefire agreement concerning unblocking in the region remained unimplemented. At the same time, the Azerbaijani leader reiterated Baku’s readiness to start the process of delimitating the Soviet-era border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“We have also publicly offered to Armenia to start working on a peace treaty to put an end to confrontation, recognize each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty and learn again to live as neighbors in the future,” Aliyev said.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, for his part, described the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh “not as stable as one would like it to be.”
“Since November 9 last year [when the ceasefire was signed] several dozen people have been killed on both sides. Incidents happen in Nagorno-Karabakh, and since May 12 we, in fact, have had a crisis at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Our assessment is that Azerbaijani troops have invaded Armenia’s sovereign territory,” Pashinian emphasized.
The Armenian leader said that despite the fact that the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan is neither delimitated nor demarcated, “the state frontier still does exist.”
Pashinian also said that the point of the ceasefire agreement concerning the return of all prisoners of war and other detainees has not been fully implemented by Azerbaijan yet. He also reiterated Yerevan’s position that Nagorno-Karabakh settlement should proceed within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group.
At the same time, Pashinian expressed Armenia’s readiness to engage in the process of delimitation of borders with Azerbaijan. He said that regional unblocking is also very important to Armenia.
“I think that today we have gathered here not only to state about problems, but also to discuss ways of solving the problems that exist and reach concrete decisions – or decisions that will be as much concrete as possible – on stabilizing the situation in the South Caucasus, because peace, stability and people’s security are our responsibility,” Pashinian said.
Before proceeding to talks behind closed doors Putin hailed the interest of both Armenia and Azerbaijan in seeing “normalization and positive development of the situation” in their region.
Pashinian and Aliyev are also scheduled to meet in Brussels on December 15 on the sidelines of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership Summit. The two leaders agreed on the meeting following talks with European Council President Charles Michel last week.
In his remarks today Putin also welcomed bilateral contacts between Yerevan and Moscow, including the planned Pashinian-Aliyev meeting in Brussels.