Russia has great potential to influence the settlement of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. This was stated by the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in an interview with RBC on Sunday, October 11.
“Russia, as our neighbor, as a country that has a common history with both Azerbaijan and Armenia, of course, it plays a special role,” Aliyev said.
He added that Russia is based “both on history and on the interaction of our peoples, as well as on the weight and role of Russia in the world and, of course, in our region.”
The Azerbaijani leader recalled that the statement following the Moscow talks between Baku and Yerevan implies the withdrawal of Armenian forces from Nagorno-Karabakh.
“We are ready to start (negotiations. – Ed.) tomorrow, so everything depends on the actions of the OSCE Minsk Group, their work schedule. Our side is ready to start immediately, ”the President said.
At the consultations in Moscow, organized at the initiative of the Russian side on October 9, Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed on a ceasefire from 12:00 local time (11:00 Moscow time) on October 10 for humanitarian purposes for the exchange of prisoners and bodies of the dead.
The parties also agreed, through the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, to start substantive negotiations to achieve a peaceful settlement of the situation in the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) and confirmed the invariability of the format of the negotiation process.
However, after reaching an agreement, the Armenian Defense Ministry reported on October 10 about the activation of the use of drones by the Azerbaijani armed forces in the southern direction of the contact line in Karabakh and about the death of 28 more NKR servicemen.
The press secretary of the Armenian Defense Ministry, Shushan Stepanyan, wrote on Facebook that on Saturday, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired rockets at villages in the vicinity of the city of Kapan, there are dead and wounded.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry denied this information, calling it a provocation, and also announced the shelling from the Armenian side of the territories of the Terter and Aghdam regions around Karabakh.
On Saturday evening, the General Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan announced a heavy artillery shelling by the Armenian Armed Forces of the villages of Chemenli and Zangishali of the Agdam region, as a result of the explosion of a shell a resident of the village of Chemenli of the NKR died.
On Sunday, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense announced that the city of Ganja had been shelled from the territory of the Berd region of Armenia. According to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, the shelling killed seven people, previously 33.
Another aggravation of the military conflict between Baku and Yerevan in Karabakh took place on September 27. The parties blamed each other for escalating the situation.
The conflict in Karabakh began in February 1988, when the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its secession from the Azerbaijan SSR. During the armed confrontation in 1992-1994, Baku lost control over the region and seven adjacent districts. Since 1992, negotiations on a peaceful settlement of the conflict have been conducted within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group, headed by three co-chairs – Russia, the United States and France.