Azerbaijan counts on Russia in normalisation of Armenia ties: Aliyev

Azerbaijan trusts more Russian role in the normalisation of ties with Armenia, the nation’s president has said ahead of a trilateral meeting with the Russian and Armenian leaders in Sochi.

“We count on Russia’s further active role in the normalisation of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations,” Ilham Aliyev said on Monday prior to a one-on-one meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Aliyev expressed his gratitude to Putin for the Russian leader’s role in the settlement of the Karabakh conflict and underscored the positive dynamics in Russian-Azerbaijan relations.

He further said the normalisation of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia can be achieved “on the basis of the five basic principles proposed by Baku.”

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Tense ties

Meanwhile, Putin underlined the need to talk about the situation in Karabakh and to look for ways to resolve issues that “have not yet been resolved,” according to the Kremlin press service.

Earlier, Putin held bilateral talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, where he highlighted ensuring peace and stability in Karabakh as being “the most important thing.”

This September, deadly clashes on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border near Karabakh claimed nearly 300 lives.

Relations between the two former Soviet republics have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Karabakh, a territory internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.

In the fall of 2020, after 44 days of clashes, Baku liberated several cities, villages and settlements from Armenian occupation, ending in a Moscow-brokered truce. The peace agreement is celebrated as a triumph in Azerbaijan.

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