MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders Monday to try to broker a deal on a long-running standoff between the two former Soviet neighbors, but announced no progress.
The peace talks came as Putin’s military launched a new barrage of missiles against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure in the standoff that entered its ninth month.
After meeting Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in the Black Sea hotel city of Sochi, Putin said they will have to remove the lingering problems of the war of words from a deal that was intended to lay the groundwork for a peace deal. He called the meetings “very helpful” but refused to answer a reporter’s question about the remaining outstanding issues, saying they were too sensitive to talk about in public.
Ahead of the meeting with Pashinyan, Putin said the goals would be to ensure peace and stability and unlock shipping infrastructure for Armenia’s economic and social development.
A joint issued after the talks said both sides pledged to avoid the use of force, negotiate issues based on respect for each other’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of borders. He said Armenia and Azerbaijan will try to normalize relations, promote peace and stability, as well as security and economic progress in their region.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are locked in a decades-long dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan but has been under the control of Armenian-backed ethnic Armenian forces since the end of a separatist war in 1994.
“We see the approaches of our colleagues on what is on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and around Karabakh,” Putin said Monday. “This confrontation has lasted for a decade, so we still want to end it. “
Meetings on the implementation of a 2020 peace agreement negotiated through Russia. During a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan recaptured large swathes of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent territories that Armenian forces had occupied for decades. More than 6,700 people were killed in the conflict. Moscow’s deployment of around 2,000 troops to the region to serve as peacekeepers.
Pashinyan said on Monday he would pressure Azerbaijan to withdraw its troops from Russia’s peacekeeping zone in Nagorno-Karabakh and call for the release of Armenian prisoners of war. An extension of Russia’s peacekeeping mandate is also being discussed, Russian news agencies reported. Putin later told reporters that expanding Russia’s peacekeeping project would have a solution to other problems.
A new round of hostilities broke out in September, when more than two hundred infantrymen were killed on both sides. Armenia and Azerbaijan traded blame for the start of the fighting.
Russia is Armenia’s main best friend and sponsor. In a delicate balancing act, he has a military base in Armenia, but has also developed ties with Azerbaijan.
In a clear reflected picture of tensions with Armenian leaders, Putin noted last Thursday that the Kremlin pleaded with Pashinyan’s government ahead of the 2020 hostilities to accept a compromise in which Armenian forces would hand over Azerbaijani lands outside Nagorno-Karabakh they seized in the early 1990s. Putin lamented that “Armenian leaders have taken another path. “
During the 2020 fighting, Azerbaijan recaptured only those territories, but also significant parts of Nagorno-Karabakh proper.