Russia “would be happy to” facilitate the signing of a peace treaty between longtime foes Armenia and Azerbaijan, President Vladimir Putin said during talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart on Monday.
“If we can do something that leads Azerbaijan and Armenia to sign a peace agreement… we’d be very happy to do so,” Putin told President Ilham Aliyev during a state visit to Baku.
Putin said he also planned to meet Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and share the outcome of his talks with Aliyev.
“It’s well known that Russia is also facing crises, primarily in the Ukrainian direction,” Putin said. “But Russia’s historical involvement in the South Caucasus situation over the past few years dictates our need to participate in these events.”
Bitter adversaries Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but has historically been populated by ethnic Armenians.
Baku took over the disputed enclave in September 2023 in a lightning offensive that ended in the dissolution of the region’s Armenian separatist government and the displacement of around 100,000 ethnic Armenians who feared ethnic cleansing by Azerbaijani authorities.
The capture of Nagorno-Karabakh has strained ties between Russia and Armenia, with Yerevan accusing longtime security guarantor Moscow of abandonment after Russian peacekeepers — stationed in Karabakh as part of a November 2020 ceasefire agreement — did not intervene in Azerbaijan’s offensive.
Russian peacekeepers this June completed their withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh one year ahead of schedule.
Russian officials have since privately admitted that the Kremlin was losing its influence in the South Caucasus as Armenia froze its participation in a Moscow-led security bloc and signaled a foreign policy shift toward the West
-The Moscow Times
