"Productive" summit: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia clarify "key issues"

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held a summit in Sochi on Friday, November 26, with Putin describing the meeting as "productive".

The meeting, which lasted lasted about three hours, marked the first anniversary of a Russia-brokered ceasefire statement that ended fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh in fall 2020.

Putin said after the meeting that the three leaders reached agreement on a whole range of key issues. Both Pashinyan and Aliyev echoed Putin's positive assessment.

"I want to confirm that we had a very positive meeting, we actually discussed all the issues on the agenda. This was not a meeting to hide the problems, but a meeting where we openly discussed all the issues. And I would like to positively assess the fact that we clarified the positions on many issues, and it turned out that we do not have any misinterpretation on a number of issues, contrary to what it seemed before this meeting," Pashinyan said.

"I would like to mention that, in fact, in connection with the opening of all transport and economic communications in the region, we registered that we have a shared idea of how those communications will operate."

The Azerbaijani side has on multiple occasions spoken about a so-called "corridor" through the southern Armenian province of Syunik that would connect Nakhijevan to the rest of Azerbaijan. The Armenian side, however, has repeatedly denied being involved in negotiations for the provision of a corridor to Azerbaijan, stressing that they have only agreed to unblock transport communications in the region.

"We agreed to take steps to increase the level of stability and security on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border, to push the process of establishment of a bilateral commission with the advisory participation of the Russian Federation based on the application of the sides, on delimitation, and afterwards demarcation, of the state border between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan," the three said in a statement adopted after the summit.

"The Russian Federation will continue to provide the necessary assistance for normalizing relations between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Armenia, building an atmosphere of trust between the Azerbaijani and Armenian peoples, and establishing good-neighborly relations in the region."

At the end of the meeting, Putin gave olive branches to Pashinyan and Aliyev to symbolize peace.