MOSCOW –
Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan on Monday to try to broker a deal on a long-running conflict between the two former Soviet neighbors, but announced no breakthrough.
The peace talks came as Putin’s army launched a new barrage of missiles at Ukraine’s critical infrastructure in the conflict that entered its ninth month.
After meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Putin said they had to remove continuing points of disagreement from a prepared statement that would have formed the basis of a peace agreement. He called the meetings “very useful” but declined to answer a reporter’s question about the remaining sticking points, saying they were too sensitive to discuss publicly.
Before the meeting with Pashinyan, Putin had said that the goals would be to ensure peace and stability and unblock transport infrastructure to help Armenia’s economic and social development.
A joint statement issued after the talks said the two sides pledged to refrain from the use of force, to negotiate issues based on respect for each other’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of each other’s borders. He said that Armenia and Azerbaijan will work to normalize relations, promote peace and stability, as well as security and economic development in their region.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994.
“We see our colleagues’ approaches to what is happening on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and around Karabakh,” Putin said Monday. “This conflict has been going on for a decade, so we still need to end it.”
The meetings concern the implementation of a 2020 peace deal that Russia brokered. During a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan recaptured wide swathes of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent territories that Armenian forces held for decades. More than 6,700 people died in the fighting. Moscow has deployed around 2,000 soldiers to the region to serve as peacekeepers.
Pashinyan said Monday that he will push for Azerbaijan to withdraw its troops from the Russian peacekeeping zone in Nagorno-Karabakh and seek the release of Armenian prisoners of war. An extension of the Russian peacekeeping mandate was also under discussion, Russian state news agencies reported. Putin told reporters afterward that the extension of Russia’s peacekeeping mission would depend on resolving other issues.
A new round of hostilities broke out in September, when more than 200 soldiers were killed on both sides. Armenia and Azerbaijan traded blame for sparking the fighting.
Russia is the main ally and sponsor of Armenia. In a delicate balancing act, it maintains a military base in Armenia but has also developed warm ties with Azerbaijan.
In an apparent reflection of tensions with Armenia’s leadership, Putin noted last Thursday that the Kremlin had advised Pashinyan’s government ahead of the 2020 hostilities to accept a compromise in which Armenian forces would hand over Azerbaijani land outside Nagorno. -Karabakh who took over in the early 1990s. . Putin lamented that “the Armenian leadership has taken a different path.”
During the 2020 fighting, Azerbaijan recaptured not only those territories, but also significant parts of Nagorno-Karabakh proper.